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AND PASTORATE 


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PRINCES of the 
CHRISTIAN PULPIT 
and PASTORATE 


By HARRY C. HOWARD 


PROFESSOR OF HOMILETICS AND PASTORAL THEOLOGY, EMORY UNIVERSITY 
A MEMBER OF THE NORTH ALABAMA CONFERENCE, 
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH 


‘Separated unto the gospel of God”’ 


NASHVILLE, TENN. 
COKESBURY PRESS 
1927 





COPYRIGHT, 1927 
BY 
LAMAR & WHITMORE 


Printed in the United States of America 


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PREFACE 


CHRIST has made no greater gift to his Church save alone 
that Spirit who proceedeth from him and from the Father 
than her princely preachers and pastors, so many of whom 
may be numbered also among the saints. The saints are 
always preachers, though the preachers be not always 
saints. The papers herein contained are written in the firm 
belief that it is Christ who creates the saints, and that he 
best preserves his Church by those preachers who, as the 
consummation of their gifts, are clothed in a character of 
holiness pure and unspotted, and who speak as the power 
of the Spirit of God gives them utterance. They best of 
all are skilled to build the sanctuary of the saints. As long 
as men have passions preachers who have kindled their 
devotion in the flame of Christ’s passion will speak to their 
souls, and command their consciences, and build them- 
selves thrones in their hearts. H. C. HOWARD. 

Emory UNIVERSITY, Ga., 

January 1, 1927. 


(7) 





CONTENTS 


I Page 
BARING T SOF EA SSISI as ele eke ee ee a ee ORL ae 11 
II 
BEETS A ROL AN Pa ecte Ieee oa ere Ree He Ie ete Se ne eatin ou 
III 
BNR STIIEPAINMEL UNDA Lt o's), scec te icie caries ee eee See ene Seca te 65 
IV 
i SPEES LISTS tap: A igre MIS a IAN psa Sean see in Ma he uae Nig ag rgb gaged yr ce 22 
V 
PMR. Le SSs 14 Ve Peer ose isp onl vind ot sihals Verse Te otis ister cteteas pleeteae eh To ae eT ne 110 
VI 
Cp PS) Dg SR YT 0 OL IG a Ray aa a ah ae urea ert AAEM dS Netcare arty Wea Mads SVU 141 
VII 
ECT OOETOT TING STONE oon Gk fs eater OE RC Oe Ade tae 170 
VIII 
PERU RRICKO  JIROBERTSON AF) fake sous Pale i bie A ean 190 
IX 
Me RCE SH1TADDON. SPURGEON wa oe oie ok 1 eR he a ee ee tata 215 
ms 
eR EMPRRIN SR ES OCS Oooo URE RTES oe ee I ae Lie ial ee aE SAN Aaa 239 
GI 
ES MARE URIS Mir he et eee ae ak ace e e eieh peRe eee kw whe alee ee 269 
XII 
DIRECORVAtOrh Ss Rar LTA EN rece ote eg Pe ot EE en ee ha Sore Re eRe ay 297 
XIII 
SE MAME CM STH be te er has See re ey Ce eee eA aa ee 325 
XIV 
SEMEN ISOM VV Y TE cic tes ie ht acer le oie cl ode Oa Re whale aE Ls Due ee 343 
XV 
SPER EOD MELO WC TTP Ria bet ste sie fiis oratacadete, Retera tie eiace a Moecere aretere ots 366 


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I 


FRANCIS OF ASSISI 
(1182-1226) 
‘“THERE ARISETH LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS” 


A GENTLER and a holier life has not been projected from — 
a dark age through successive centuries than that of St. 
Francis of Assisi. The age was dark. To tell its story in 
’ simple truth without the aid of exaggeration is to leave it 
dark enough. Clergy and Church alike, appointed in the 
providence of God to be bearers of light to mankind, lived 
themselves in darkness. Bishops battened on their own 
clergy and extorted money from the simpler priests as 
wolves demand flesh from lambs. Clerics by payment of 
the collagium obtained the right to keep a concubine. 
Simony was practiced as freely in the Church as were the 
buying and selling of material commodities in the markets. 
The Church existed for priests and not priests for the 
_ Church. No class of the clergy as a class escaped the con- 
tagion of the times. Corruption was not confined to the 
more highly beneficed. Inevitably it flows from higher to 
lower levels. ‘‘As to the priests,’ says Sabatier in his 
fascinating ‘‘Life of St. Francis of Assisi,’”’ ‘“‘they bent all 
their powers to accumulate benefices, and secure inherti- 
tances from the dying, stooping to the most despicable 
measures for providing for their bastards.’’ Not even the 
monastic orders came scatheless through the corrupt prac- 
tices of the time. Though of comparatively recent origin, 
evil customs had invaded their sanctuaries and greatly con- 
taminated their standards of conduct. Their early reputa- 
tion for sanctity had captured the popular imagination and 


(11) 


12 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


correspondingly stimulated liberality toward monastic en- 
terprises. But a too lavish provision for their material 
comfort and advantage they were not able to withstand. 
It is as true of priests as of princes that their more-having 
is but as a sauce to make them hunger more. So ran the 
experience of a prince who might have admonished these 


priests: 
‘‘With this there grows 
In my most ill-composed affection such 
A stanchless avarice that, were I king, 
I should cut off the nobles for their lands, 
Desire his jewels and this other’s house: 
And my more-having would be as a sauce 
To make me hunger more; that I should forge 
Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal, 
Destroying them for wealth.” 


This avarice eats out 


‘the king-becoming graces, 
As justice, verity, temperance, stableness, 
Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, 
Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude.” 


And even more greedily does it devour the priest-becoming 
graces. Avarice, ambition, and luxury showed no respect 
to monastic retreats and priestly seclusion in the Middle 
Ages, but invaded them as ruthlessly as a butcher might 
invest his shambles. Indeed, avarice and lust have been 
but as the scavengers of polluted priestly character in 
more than one age of the Church. And when clerical 
character degenerates, clerical functions decay. It was 
very becoming that such priests should not preach. Preach- 
ing such as there was was confined almost entirely to the 
bishops, and their chief business was to be prelates and 
not preachers. The secular clergy, as distinguished from 
the clergy connected with the monasteries, took up preach- 
ing only when compelled to do so by the zeal and diligence 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 13 


of the mendicant monks. ‘‘Seldom,” says Dr. A. E. 
Garvie, “has the power of preaching been proved as it 
was by the friars.’’ Largely through the lack of preaching 
public worship was reduced from conscious and intelligent 
devotion to liturgical ceremonies, and these in their turn 
degenerated into a sort of self-acting formula of magic in 
which there was hardly intended to be any appeal to either 
mind or conscience. Relics conceived of as being able to 
perform miracles took the place in religion of the living 
God. A book which is said to give the best idea of the 
state of religious thought in the thirteenth century tells 
of a parrot being carried away by a kite which with a 
display of zeal befitting the circumstances repeated the in- 
vocation dear to its mistress, Sancte Thoma adjuva me, 
and was immediately released. When miracle descends 
to magic it is always grotesque and extravagant. And 
yet with just such superstitions the atmosphere of the 
thirteenth and adjacent centuries was pregnant. Not all 
the darkness of the Middle Ages is to be settled upon the 
thirteenth century. It was better than some others, and 
hardly worse than some others. 

The world is never wholly bad. It could not be and sur- 
vive. It could not so do despite to God’s grace and main- 
tain its course toward any distant destiny. It would too 
soon be cut off for that. It could only be engulfed in its 
present iniquities. And so there were saints in those dark 
ages. The faithful remnant is never entirely cut off. Were 
there no light anywhere how should men know that it was 
night? Creatures that are constitutionally blind have no 
night. The night and the day are both alike to them. 
But those who know that it is night know also that there 
is day, and for the day they long. And it is this longing 
that brings the day. These are they that wait for Jehovah. 
And it is the rustling of the wings of his angels of light 


14 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


coming to them which kindles the hope of the day in their 
hearts. ‘‘I wait for Jehovah,” in concert they say; ‘‘my 
soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. My soul waiteth 
for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning; 
yea, more than watchmen for the morning.’’ A day so 
longed for will sooner or later thrust up the lines of its 
dawn out of the darkness. If it were not so, there had been 
no Francis of Assisi. And there had been no saints in 
any dark age. 

There was at this particular time a groping for some 
clearer sense of the unity of human consciousness and 
destiny, as if by some undeserved mercy of God the will 
of the race might move toward better things. It was a 
time of misgiving and of crisis, one of those times when the 
pressure of the world and the problems of its destiny weigh 
so heavily upon the mind of man that that mind is molded 
into a common impulse to seek after God and to find him, 
though he be not very far from any age. Europe was 
curiously parceled out politically, but passing sad it were 
if the intellectual and moral consciousness of man could 
not leap over the barriers of political division and come to 
a common consciousness of interest and need and destiny 
with the man on the other side. And so Sabatier thinks 
there was at the time “‘what might be called a state of 
European consciousness.’’ Something like this, of course, 
must ever lie back of the distinctive individual conscious- 
ness and form a seed plot for its development. No man 
can ever be entirely dissevered from his age. A great saint 
is first of all a product of God’s grace; but he must grow 
in his own age. He is a product of God’s grace and of his 
age. This was particularly true of Francis of Assisi. ‘‘He 
is the incarnation of the Italian soul at the beginning of 
the thirteenth century.’ In this time, which had both its 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 15 


saints and its heretics, he appeared as its preéminent saint. 
Out of such darkness was such a light to arise. 

In the little town of Assisi, in Umbria, which has been 
lifted by him to the pinnacle of a world fame, Francis was 
born in 1181 or 1182. The greater probability seems to 
incline to the latter date. His father, Pietro Bernardone, 
was a prosperous cloth merchant whose business called 
him much abroad where he would visit the famous fairs, 
meeting there other merchants from remote parts of Eu- 
rope and spending long seasons in the pursuit of his em- 
ployment. Merchants of this type were a main channel of 
communication among the peoples of the time and turned 
their occupation to account in other ways than those which 
were purely commercial. Religious news more especially 
was conveyed by them from place to place, for in this the 
people were more interested than in any other. Bernadone 
was away in France on one of these journeys when Francis 
was born, and on his return he said that the child should 
be called Francesco, or Francis, instead of John by which 
his mother had had him called at his baptism. This con- 
trariety of opinion between the father and mother ran 
much deeper than the mere naming of the child. They were 
disagreed with respect to much more vital matters. The 
father’s ill-considered indulgence of the child brought 
much sorrow to the mother’s heart. Bernadone’s wealth 
was placed rather too freely at the disposal of Francis, 
who was none too reluctant to have it so. He was of a 
decidedly convivial temperament, with an uncontrolled 
tendency toward self-indulgent pastimes. There are always 
flies ready to put their feet in this paste, and companions 
with a similar tendency to his own flocked about him, 
buzzing their approval continually in his willing ears. 
“He drew them after him like a tail of iniquity,” one of 
his biographers says. The cup of pleasure is first sweet, 


16 PRINCES OF THE *CHRISTIAN 


then tart, then tasteless, and at last bitter, and Francis 
drained it through all these stages. 

In the meantime his education was much neglected. He 
learned a little Latin, which was spoken in Umbria until 
about the middle of the thirteenth century. It was still 
the language of sermons and of political deliberation. He 
learned to write, but not with any facility. He had the 
advantage of a knowledge of two languages, for he also 
learned French. This was the matter of most account in 
his education, both in the bent given to his mind and in 
influence upon his career. 


‘* A GREAT SOUL IN WHICH THERE Is No ALTAR” 


Pica, wife of Bernadone and mother of Francis, described 
as a ‘“‘gentle and modest creature, concerning whom the 
biographers have been only too laconic,” saw the course 
her son was taking and suffered poignant grief. All her 
protests, if indeed she dared to protest at all, were inef- 
fectual against the more resolute will and easier conscience 
of Bernadone. He was bringing Francis up to follow him 
in business, having already associated him with himself in 
the business, and he had less strict ideas of life than he had 
of business. Yet Pica never despaired of the future of her 
son. On hearing of his wildest escapades she would quietly 
say: “‘I am very sure that, if it pleases God, he will become 
a good Christian.”’ Just how far he went in his follies is 
occasion of disagreement among his biographers. The 
earliest among them ‘‘agree in picturing him as going to 
the worst excesses.’’ Sabatier is not disposed to spare him. 
Bonaventura says: ‘God guarded him with special care. 
His flesh, which was afterwards to bear the sacred stigmata 
of our Saviour, was preserved virginal.’’ This evidently 
is propaganda. The wish is father to the thought. The 
theory is father to the supposititious fact. Le Monnier 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 17 


admits that he was addicted ‘‘to empty amusements and 
pleasures,” but doubts the truth of the accusation of 
grosser deeds. Even Mr. G. K. Chesterton, fresh from his 
own conversion to Romanism, agrees that Francis, though 
his reformation had already begun, not only sold his own 
horse in order to advance some of his earlier enterprises, 
but that he also sold ‘‘several bales of his father’s cloth, 
making the sign of the cross over them to indicate their 
pious and charitable destination.”” This was hardly less 
than worthy of the scoundrelly Mohammedan who divined 
over the goods of David Livingstone when they had come 
up from the coast ahead of their owner’s return from the 
wilds of the interior. Discovering by this process just 
what he had set out to discover—namely, that Livingstone 
was dead—he appropriated the goods, so that when at 
last Livingstone straggled in more dead than alive to the 
shores of Lake Tanganyika he found himself without sup- 
plies. 

Francis had entertained an ambition to be a great prince, 
and in pursuance of his aim had thrown himself into one 
or two military exploits. On the first of these he was cap- 
tured by the enemy and detained for a year as a prisoner. 
Returning to Assisi, he plunged forthwith into his former 
mode of life. A grave illness ensued which seems to have 
been due to the excesses in which he had indulged. For 
long weeks he lay near to the gates of death, and was 
thereby awakened to a state of self-realization. The empti- 
ness of his life appeared to him in startling and convincing 
colors. For him the world had not sufficed. ‘‘He was 
terrified at his solitude,’’ as Sabatier has said, ‘‘the solitude 
of a great soul in which there is no altar.’”’ Self-contempt 
and self-loathing seized him. He had tried to live without 
God and without religion. There was no central altar in 
his soul. He had sacrificed to vanity and pleasure, and 


18 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


on his altar there lay only the ashes of a maudlin satiety 
stifling his soul. Yet again he plunged into pleasure and 
asked of it new delights. Until the soul builds itself a 
central altar and makes the supreme sacrifice any vaga- 
bond altar catering to mere wayside moods may command 
its devotion. It is a slave of its own passion and pride and 
luxury and lust. 

He entered now upon another military expedition for 
which he had made elaborate preparation; but on the 
evening of the very day that he set out he had a dream 
which determined him to return to Assisi. His sudden re- 
appearance made a great stir in the town. He was seeking 
a way the very direction of which was as yet uncertain to 
him. Charities to the poor, to which he had long been ac- 
customed to devote himself and to which the ardor of his 
nature zealously inclined him, were doubled, and the action 
indicated that some change was going on in his inner life. 
His old companions again thronged him bent upon utilizing 
him still as the prodigal purveyor to their leech-like ap- 
petites. But he had now set a cessation to the power of all 
these things to hold him. An unknown friend came to 
him and strongly assisted the return of his former more 
serious reflections. Religion seems now to have made its 
first conscious and decisive appeal to him. He began to 
see more clearly a new way of life, and to desire with 
characteristic impetuosity to enter it. 


BREAKING THROUGH THE BARRIERS 


He was entering the shadow which should deepen into 
midnight in his soul. An unseen but terribly felt Antag- 
onist whom he could hardly distinguish from the anguish 
of his own life appeared to wrestle with him in the dark- 
ness. Only in learning the darkness of his own nature does 
a man flee that darkness and turn toward the light. Only 


He bride I PASTORATE 19 


when he has been down into the dungeons of his own 
character, as Dr. Alexander McLaren would say, does he 
begin to climb toward the light. Only in the lone wrestling 
which reveals the weakness of his own soul does he learn 
to cleave to the strength which stands sublime above his 
own. 

A grotto in the country near Assisi, a rocky cave con- 
cealed among the olives which have a habitat in Umbria, 
furnished Francis a retreat suited to the moods of his spirit. 
A pallor of countenance begotten of the intensity of his 
travail carried to observers the secrets of his solitude. 
But the demon of evil companionship was relentless, and 
he was continually enticed toward his old life again. One 
day he invited these leeches to a sumptuous banquet. 
They thought they had won him and proclaimed him once 
more the lord of their lawless and libidinous revels. Late 
into the night their carousals were protracted, until at last 
his guests were so inflamed that they ran with an uproar 
into the street. Suddenly they perceived that Francis 
was not with them. When after much searching they found 
him he seemed lost in reverie. Seeking to arouse his at- 
tention, one of them, when all else had failed, said: ‘‘ Don’t 
you see that he is thinking of taking a wife?” ‘‘Yes,” 
said Francis, answering them in a way which they had not 
asked, ‘‘I am thinking of taking a wife more beautiful, 
more rich, more pure than you could ever imagine.” This 
reply was the settling of one of the major decisions of his 
life. It was the first decisive break through the barriers. 
His reveling friends soon accepted the situation and left 
him to take his own course. He on his own part cut loose 
more and more effectually from his past, not without bitter 
grief over his dissipations, while still he found in solitude 
his greatest solace. 

He had made friends of the poor, and their gratitude and 


20 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


affection built a very castle of comfort for his heart when 
all else that was human failed him. The abjectness and 
dependence of their condition only served to throw into 
stronger relief the graciousness and faithfulness of his 
friendship for them. And the greatest wonder of it all was 
their ability to appreciate the courage of his attitude 
toward them and their discernment of the fine qualities of 
the man himself. ‘‘All sorrows are sisters; a secret intelli- 
gence establishes itself between troubled hearts, however 
diverse their griefs. The poor people felt that their friend 
also suffered; they did not precisely know what, but they 
forgot their own sorrows in pitying their benefactor.”’ 
Going on a journey to Rome he found many beggars there. 
He borrowed the rags of one of them and stood all day thus 
arrayed, fasting, and with outstretched hand in the beggar’s 
characteristic pose. It was an act of sincere sympathy 
with the beggar’s lot; and a realistic effort to know what a 
mendicant felt. At another time he was riding alone on 
horseback, while he meditated deeply on the way he sought 
but had not yet found, when he was startled to find himself 
facing a leper in the road. The disease held for him an in- 
vincible repulsion, and, horror-stricken, he yielded to an 
impulse to turn his horse the other way and to escape. 
But immediately he began to reproach himself bitterly 
with the thought of the inconsistency between his devout 
meditations and his precipitate flight; and so, retracing 
quickly his course, he sprang from his horse, gave to the 
astonished outcast all the money he had, and kissed his 
hand as if he had been a priest. A few days later he visited 
the lazaretto and ministered in the most familiar way to the 
poor outcast creatures so wretchedly huddled together 
there. He had broken through the last barrier that could 
separate between himself and any other man whatsoever. 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 21 


He has to complete the action by breaking through all the 
barriers which separate between himself and God. 


THE First CHRISTIAN CENTURY TRANSPORTED INTO THE 
‘THIRTEENTH 


Francis’s father now became seriously disaffected toward 
him. All his plans for the future were being frustrated. 
His pride in his son was turning to disgust. His paternal 
authority was being flouted. He regarded himself as being 
disgraced in the conduct of Francis. Such behavior on 
the part of a son of Bernadone was intolerable. Francis 
might gang with his spendthrifts and spend all the money 
he pleased, and his access to the coffers of his father was not 
restricted. But the line was drawn at his feeding every 
hungry beggar he met in the streets. These did not belong 
in the same class in which he counted himself, and in which 
he desired to keep Francis. The chasm of their differences 
only deepened. Francis could find none who could under- 
stand and help him. Better moods and higher desires 
were insistently seeking to have sway over him and to 
command all his future; but there was none to help him. 
No man seemed to care for his soul. There were times 
when he was as desolate as the Psalmist whose cry had 
entered into the travail of the centuries now long past, but 
not too distant to be echoed by the cry of his own soul. 
He even went to his bishop, but found no guidance there. 
The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, had come 
to be esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of 
the potter. He needed help from the sanctuary, but there 
was none there. To think that ever the Church of Christ 
could not guide a soul like Francis! He sought to find the 
way to lay help upon One that was Mighty, and the 
Church was as dumb in its guidance as a stone wall. He 
asked but little of men, for they had nothing to give. 


ay PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


Most of them possessed not so much as an ass’s knowledge 
of his master’s crib; and so he obtained nothing from them. 
He must beat out his own path to God and peace. And if 
he does not do it, then his own case shall be as hopeless as 
the rest. There lies the value of such men as he. They 
must give the world what the world cannot give them, 
else both they and the world must grope on in utter dark- 
ness. 

In the neighborhood of Assisi were many chapels, the 
most of them but poorly kept by very poor priests To 
one of these, that of St. Damian, Francis was drawn by a 
passionate devotion. The priest was so poor that he hardly 
had his necessary food. And the chapel was no better 
supported than the priest. One day Francis prayed there 
before the altar, pouring out the very depths of his desire 
in supplication: ‘‘Great and glorious God, and thou, Lord 
Jesus, I pray ye, shed abroad your light in the darkness of 
my mind. ... Be found of me, Lord, so that in all things I 
may act only in accordance with thy holy will.’ His 
gaze was fixed upon Jesus portrayed in the crucifix. The 
material substance of the image seemed to assume life, 
and the Victim of the Cross seemed in the silence to speak 
to him. The young Assisian had found the young Galilean. 
The young Galilean had found the young Assisian. The 
purity of their espousal was ever to wax, the glory of it 
never to wane. It was the first conscious contact of 
Francis with Jesus Christ, and he was conquered. Coming 
out of the chapel, he gave all the money he had to the 
priest to keep a lamp always burning, and returned over 
the stony path which led under the olives to Assisi. He 
would leave his father’s house and pledge himself to the 
restoration of the chapel which had not scorned the mean- 
ness of his coming to its altars. Riding off to the fair 
at Foligno, whither his father had often carried him, he 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 23 


sold his horse and a few pieces of other stuff he had, and 
set out again, not for Assisi, but for St. Damian, full of the 
joy of what he had done. All the money the disposal of 
his property had brought him he offered to the poor priest 
at the chapel, who refused to accept the money, but re- 
luctantly granted Francis permission to remain with him. 
Doubtless he feared trouble with Bernadone if he was too 
friendly with Francis. And well he might. For the cal- 
culating and implacable merchant, who knew more about 
matters of business than the concerns of conscience, was 
more and more outraged at Francis’s conduct and organized 
a hot pursuit of him. Francis, in great distress of mind 
and heart, remained hidden for many days, but finally 
could sustain the part no longer and presented himself 
before his father. He was subjected to ill usage of the vilest 
and most violent sort; and when he would not desist from 
his course he was left bound in his father’s house when the 
latter for purposes of business had for a while to absent 
himself. Pica importuned him with gentler measures, but 
neither did these avail, and she released him. Bernadone 
returned and was so far provoked with Pica as wantonly 
to strike her. He had Francis summoned to appear be- 
fore the civil magistrates, but he refused on the ground 
that his case did not come within their jurisdiction. He 
gladly obeyed, however, a citation to appear before the 
ecclesiastical tribunal. The bishop stated the case against 
him, in which the sale of his father’s goods was involved, 
and advised him to give up all his property. The court 
was quite taken off its composure when Francis immediate- 
ly retired to a room in the bishop’s palace where the sitting 
was held and, removing all his clothing, he returned to 
present himself naked before the astonished company. 
Holding in his hand the packet in which he had rolled 
his clothes, he laid it down before the bishop, with 


24 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


the money which he still had, saying that he would no 
longer call Pietro Bernadone father, for henceforth he de- 
sired nothing else than to say, “‘Our Father, who art in 
heaven.’”’ Bernadone gathered up the money and clothing 
and coolly carried them off, while the bishop was moved 
with compassion toward Francis, and all who witnessed 
the scene were deeply impressed. 

Francis himself retreated into a wild and mountainous 
forest clad in nothing but an old mantle which the bishop’s 
gardener had given him at the bishop’s request. Here he 
encountered a band of ruffians who, when they had in- 
quired and he had told them that he was the herald of 
God, stripped him and threw him into a ditch filled with 
snow, suiting their word to their action, and saying: 
‘There is your place, poor herald of God.’’ He succeeded 
with difficulty in extricating himself from the ditch; but 
having done so, he after a while reached a monastery in 
the mountains where his reception was none too cordial. 
He soon left the place, found a friend on the way who gave 
him a tunic, and returned to St. Damian. Going into the 
streets of Assisi he would beg stones of any who would hear 
him, for the restoration of the chapel, to which he had 
pledged himself, and receiving the stones he would bear 
them on his own shoulders to their destination. In the 
streets he also begged oil for the lamps of the chapel. 

In the spring of 1208 he completed the proposed repairs 
on St. Damian, and then turned his attention with a 
similar purpose to another chapel, Portiuncula, which also 
stood near Assisi. Here in the Portiuncula, when its re- 
pairs had been completed, on February 24, 1209, mass 
was being celebrated in the usual way when something 
quite unusual wrote itself in the calendar of an age which 
else had been forever darker. It was St. Matthew’s Day 
and the priest who ministered at the altar was reading from 


or oMeany 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 25 


the Gospel of Matthew the account of the sending out of 
the original apostles. The soul of Francis was enraptured. 
The priest read on: “As ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom 
of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, 
raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, 
freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass, 
in your purses; nor scrip for your journey, neither two 
coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves; for the workman is 
worthy of his meat.’’ The priest vanished from the vision 
of Francis and the Crucified One, who at the altar of St. 
Damian had become the center and the throne of his re- 
ligious life, appeared in his place; and Francis heard him 
speaking in tones which he alone can command. He 
felt the apostolic commission to be reénacted in his own 
consciousness of obligation to do the will of Christ, and 
himself called to the apostolic life. In a rapture of de- 
votion he received the summons. ‘Immediately throwing 
aside his stick, his scrip, his purse, his shoes, he determined 
immediately to obey, observing to the letter the precepts 
of the apostolic life.” The very next morning he went up 
to Assisi and began to preach. There was about the man 
and his action a simplicity, a sincerity, a spontaneity of 
purpose which admirably became the new endeavor upon 
which he had set himself. He reincarnated the first Chris- 
tian century in the thirteenth. Writing in the eleventh 
edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Rev. Edward 
Cuthbert Butler says: ‘‘It is probably true to say that no 
one has ever set himself so seriously to imitate the life of 
Christ and to carry out so literally Christ’s work in Christ’s 
own way.” 

Francis preached and the souls of men which were slum- 
bering in them but not dead leaped up at his call and found 
strength to walk, and to praise God, and to run in the 
way of his service. Soon the army of dry bones which 


26 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN: 


filled the Italian valleys and lay scattered upon the hill- 
sides stood upon its feet as a host of the living God. The 
very rarity and fullness of the demands which he laid upon 
men attracted and won them. He offered them not only a 
cause, but a crusade as well. He made a sufficient demand 
to be heard. For, after all, the religions of most demands 
have most ruled the world. He was able to lay a holy 
constraint upon the consciences of men because he had 
first of all laid such a constraint ungrudgingly upon himself. 
There was not a single jar in his own nature when he made 
these lofty appeals. Not a single note did he strike dis- 
cordant with his own conscience, or with the Spirit-con- 
strained conscience of any other man. It was a new and 
yet ever-old preaching, and the apostolic days again came 
down to earth. 

A man of Assisi, so little known that his name has es- 
caped through the meshes of the history, joined himself 
to Francis. His arrival at the Portiuncula was the signal 
for the arrival of a new idea to the mind of Francis. Might 
he not find a few companions with whom he could carry on 
the apostolic mission in the neighborhood? Another citizen 
of Assisi, in this instance a man of prominence and wealth, 
Bernardo di Quintavalle, came into the slowly increasing 
circle. He first received Francis into his home and was kind 
to him. Then he sold all that he had and followed him. 
Accompanied by another neophyte named Pietro, Francis 
carried Bernardo up to a church in the early dawn of a day 
rendered ever after fit for the calendar, and solemnly read 
to them the passages which had fixed his own vocation. 
They needed no other initiation to a life of devotion and 
service. The New Testament was a sufficient social service 
program for the age. Perhaps if men got back to it, or 
moved forward to its simple and perpetual principles, they 
would find it sufficient for this age. 


PudeP le ANDM@ PASTORATE 2 


There were now brought together the Three Companions 
of Francis, as they came to be designated in the history, 
and with them the Franciscan Order may be said to have 
begun. Its beginnings were laid in simplicity itself. Men 
came of their own will, without invitation or constraint. 
Francis called men to the evangelical life. If they fol- 
lowed him further than this, they must come of their own 
accord. Only those who felt the constraint in themselves 
and in their own consciences were called to the apostolic 
life after the fashion that he followed it. The Portiuncula 
was a center and a gathering place for them, but not a 
home. Home they had none. So little had they a fixed 
abode that an early convert wishing to join them did not 
know where to find them, and only came upon them at 
last by chance. Their calling was to be friars and not 
monks. Mr. Chesterton thus states the difference: ‘‘The 
whole point of a monk was that his economic affairs were 
settled for good; he knew where he would get his supper, 
though it was a very plain supper. There was always a 
possibility that he might get no supper. But the whole 
point of a friar was that he did not know where he would 
get his supper.’’ One version of the origin of their costume 
was that Francis had exchanged clothes with a beggar. 
Another was that he had received the cast-off tunic of a 
beggar, and, having rejected the girdle as an article of 
apparel, had “picked up a rope more or less at random, 
because it was lying near, and tied it round his waist.”’ 
Ten years later this ‘‘makeshift costume was the uniform 
of five thousand men; and a hundred years later, in that, 
for a pontifical panoply, they laid great Dante in the 
grave.” Whether, therefore, with respect to clothing, 
food, or shelter they were apostolically indifferent. At the 
first they put up shelters about the Portiuncula which were 
but booths rather than buildings; and when they left there 


28 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


the only chart for their return was that they would meet 
there again. 

The Bishop of Assisi said to Francis one day: “ Your 
way of living without owning anything seems to me very 
harsh and difficult.”” He made the undaunted and unas- 
sailable reply that if he and his friars had property they 
should need weapons and laws to defend them. That reply 
is the clue to the policy he pursued; but it was policy rooted 
in principle, if ever policy was. ‘We are penitents, natives 
of the city of Assisi,” his early friars in simple truth would 
answer when asked by strangers whence they were, or to 
what order they belonged. 

At length, seeing that the number of his followers in- 
creased daily, Francis set out for Rome to procure the 
approval of the Rule of his Order by the Pope. Including 
Francis himself there were twelve of the brethren who went 
on this mission. According to Bonaventura, the Pope, 
Innocent III, was walking on the terrace of the St. John 
Lateran when there abruptly appeared before him a stran- 
ger in garments so rudely cast that he took him for some 
sort of shepherd and immediately sent him away. But a 
dream which invaded the papal night opened the door to 
Francis the next morning. This may be fancy. But it is 
no fancy that Francis had very little to ask of the Pope. 
He simply wished that his order might be authorized to 
exist without having any privilege at all, but only ‘‘to lead 
a life of absolute conformity to the precepts of the gospel.’’ 
There was really no rule to approve except the rule of Jesus 
himself. Through one of the cardinals the Pope informed 
himself more particularly of the case, but held up his de- 
cision from day to day, while Francis was advised to go 
into one of the already existing orders. But this would 
have been to defeat his whole purpose, and he promptly 
saw it to be so. Still admonishing them, though mainly 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 29 


through the cardinal who acted for him, that their rule was 
too severe, the Pope at last gave his verbal approval of the 
plans for the Order. 


THE PERILS OF PROSPERITY 


The mission of Francis was apostolic not in name only, 
but also in the swiftness and thoroughness of its effect. 
The Pope had required the appointment of a responsible 
superior of the Order to whom the ecclesiastical authorities 
might look in their dealings with it. Very naturally Francis 
was appointed. But it was his heart and not his hand that 
ruled the Order. The movement swept on with startling 
success. The contemporary preaching was not preaching, 
even what there was of it. But the preaching of Francis 
and his friars was preaching, preaching that seized the very 
heart and conscience of the willing multitudes, bringing 
them captive to the obedience of Christ. Francis set the 
example of open-air sermons, later so effectually followed, 
sermons given in the tongue of the people, at street corners, 
in public squares, and in the open fields. For the forms and 
precepts of the schools he cared not at all, caring, indeed, 
so little for them, and caring so much for what really mat- 
tered in his appeal to the people that he unconsciously con- 
formed to much of the best that the schools have ever had 
to say on the subject of preaching. He did not, of course, 
care as much for the schools as he ought, and he never 
cared as much for education as he ought. But who will 
say that the schools have not committed as serious errors 
in the opposite direction? Rules are derived from men, 
and not men from rules. This the wiser rhetoricians very 
well know; and they conform the precepts to the practice. 
Francis was simple enough for the village idiot, as Mr. 
Chesterton has said; and the village idiot does not have all 
preachers to thank for this considerate conformity to the 


30 PRINCES OF THE GHRISTiIAT 


requirements of his condition. Francis cared for nothing but 
the conversion of souls. And he desired only genuine con- 
version which could give an immediate and a very practical 
and Christian account of itself. ‘‘Men must give up ill- 
gotten gains, renounce their enmities, be reconciled with 
their adversaries.”” It was only the account which genuine 
conversion must give of itself in any age. 

The man himself, through the singleness of his motive 
and the intensity of his concern, almost without speaking, 
possessed a power of conversion. When to this fact speech 
was added the effect was marvelous. ‘‘I, Brother Francis,” 
he would say, ‘‘the least of your servants, pray and conjure 
you by that love which is God himself, willing to throw 
myself at your feet and kiss them, to receive with humility 
and love these words and all others of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, to put them to profit and carry them out.” Sabatier 
testifies that ‘‘conversions multiplied with incredible 
rapidity.”’ Often a word or a look sufficed to draw and 
bind men inseparably to him. His recruits came mostly 
from the young men, the sons of farmers, and some of 
them from among the nobility, but few from the schools 
or the Church. Men of this character were naturally most 
serviceable to his mission. 

Could the Order have preserved its original simplicity 
of life and purity of purpose it might also have maintained 
its early record for influence and power. The first Fran- 
ciscan convent at Portiuncula was built and organized 
within three or four days. A few huts were built, and these 
inclosed with a quickset hedge. Of palaces and walls they 
took no thought. For ten years they asked no more than 
the hut and the hedge. They were content with the forest 
for a cloister and the sky for a canopy. So continuing 
their conspicuous spiritual success continued. In these 
heroic days Clara, who was herself born in Assisi, was con- 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 31 


verted through the influence of Francis, and an organiza- 
tion for women was attached to the Order. But how could 
‘so vast a movement conserve its success without property? 
How could it live without houses? And where were the 
houses without land? Does not common sense say that 
even a spiritual movement has need of these things? The 
mustard seed and the leaven must work together. The 
Christian people must indeed seek first the kingdom of 
heaven. But all the time even God knows that they have 
need of food and raiment. ‘‘ Your heavenly Father know- 
eth that ye have need of all these things.’’ But somehow 
the Christian people seem ruinously prone to seek these 
things even as the Gentiles seek them. In the matter of 
the possession of property, even though some measure of 
it be needful, it is fatally easy for even good people to fall 
into a snare. This hazard the Order of Francis by reason 
of its very prosperity had to run. With him “gospel sim- 
plicity reappeared upon the earth.”” But it hardly remained 
with his Order. ‘ 
The Church of course had a hand in the change in the 
course of affairs. Here was too much power to be per- 
mitted to run unchecked, and to be left undirected toward 
those ends which the Church itself, and not the Order 
acting more or less independently, might choose. Mr. 
Chesterton makes a good argument for this point of view. 
But it is not everybody who will follow him entirely, either 
in his premises or his conclusion. If a Church cannot easily 
err, then of course it cannot easily err, and you must look 
at it that way. Then, too, it may as well be frankly said 
that Francis, spiritual genius though he was, had no hand 
for the management of affairs of a too largely material or 
too expressly ecclesiastical a character. Hesuffered much in 
his later life at seeing his order go from his grasp and decline 
from its original integrity. On his abdication of its official 


32 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


leadership he told the story of his devotion to its interests 
in these revealing words: ‘‘Lord, I give thee back this 
family which thou didst intrust to me. Thou knowest, 
most sweet Jesus, that I have no more the power and the 
qualities to continue to take care of it. I intrust it, there- 
fore, to the ministers. Let them be responsible before thee 
at the Day of Judgment, if any brother by their negligence, 
or their bad example, or by a too severe punishment, shall 
go astray.” His tender heart beat out alike its grief and 
its joy when on Saturday, October 3, 1226, at nightfall, 
he died in the humility in which he had so steadfastly lived. 


THE PREROGATIVES OF THE SAINTS 


The saints do not argue their prerogatives; yet they have 
them. They have them just because they do not ask them. 
Francis asked of God no privilege unless it might be that 
he should have none. 

1. The first prerogative of the saints is to be poor. They 
begin their career in poverty of spirit. This they have 
though they be well sprung in the wealth of this world. 
This they have and they are rich within. Poverty as a 
physical estate is not piety; nevertheless, it seems to have 
a congruity with piety which wealth does not so easily 
have. Poverty sets its own snares, but wealth sets more. 
Francis had this feeling to an extraordinary degree. Above 
all else he was an ascetic. He was by preéminence the 
Christian ascetic. Asceticism in him did not narrow nor 
harden Christian sentiment or charity. He literally es- 
poused himself to poverty. He loved poverty because he 
loved Christ, as witnessed in the fervor of this prayer: 
‘Poverty was in the crib, and like a faithful squire she 
kept herself armed in the great combat thou didst wage for 
our redemption. During thy passion she alone did not 
forsake thee. Mary, thy mother, stopped at the foot of 


Peer iieAND PASTORATE 33 


the Cross, but poverty mounted it with thee, and clasped 
thee in her embrace unto the end; and when thou wast 
dying with thirst, asa watchful spouse she prepared 
for thee the gall. Thou didst expire in the ardor of her 
embraces, nor did she leave thee when dead, O Lord 
Jesus, for she allowed not thy body to rest elsewhere than 
in a borrowed grave. O poorest Jesus, the grace I beg of 
thee is to bestow on me the treasure of the highest poverty. 
Grant that the distinctive mark of our Order may be never 
to possess anything as its own under the sun for the glory 
of thy name, and to have no other patrimony than beg- 
ging.’ He wished to be taken from his dying bed and to 
be laid unclothed upon the bare floor as a final act of de- 
votion to his Lady Poverty. Who ever won more fully 
the beatitude of the poor in spirit than this poor deacon 
of the Middle Ages? Truly, the kingdom of heaven was 
his. How strongly did its mightiest compulsions blend in 
the beauty of his character! ‘‘The life of Francis,” says 
John Richard Green, in his “‘ History of the English People,”’ 
“falls like a stream of tender light across the darkness of 
the time.” 

2. The saints have their striving and their travail, too. 
They have the travail of their own continuance in the 
kingdom of God. And they have the travail of all those 
who will not enter with them into that kingdom. It is 
their prerogative to realize more sensitively their own sin, 
and to carry more sensitively the sins of others. They 
carry their own sorrows, and they carry the sorrows of the 
world. The very travail by which the kingdom of God 
comes in has its seat in their soul. Capacity for sainthood 
is in good part a capacity for suffering. Out of their sorrow 
and suffering the sympathy of the saints is born. Grace 
released a veritable fountain of sympathy when Francis 


was converted. His was a soul capable of solitude and of 
3 


34 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


torture. He passed whole nights in tortuous struggle and 
prayer, doubting sometimes the course he had taken, and 
regretting the exaggerated asceticism of his life; but out of 
it all winning those deeper resignations and more utter re- 
finements of spirit which the emptier life can never know. 
Once more Sabatier says: ‘‘Yes, St. Francis forever felt 
the travail of the transformation taking place in the womb 
of humanity, going forward to its divine destiny, and he 
offered himself a living oblation, that in him might take 
place the mysterious palingenesis.”’ 

He was the man of the stigma. Was it fiction or fact? 
Sabatier, who also gives credence to the miracles, at last 
accepted the report of it as fact, and records the following 
account of its reception, when Francis had fasted and 
prayed for many days in the solitudes of the Verna: “‘A 
seraph, with outspread wings, flew toward him from the 
edge of the horizon, and bathed his soul in raptures un- 
utterable. In the center of the vision appeared a cross, and 
the seraph was nailed upon it. When the vision disap- 
peared, he felt sharp sufferings mingling with the ecstacy of 
the first moments. Stirred to the very depths of his being, 
he was anxiously seeking the meaning of it all, when he 
perceived upon his body the stigmata of the Crucified.” 
The story of the stigmata may be a fiction; but Francis 
~-was no fiction, and his devotion to Christ was as real as 
Francis himself. 

3. Then, too, the saints have their disdain of privilege 
and of mere outward observance. Too often the saint has 
to be the antithesis of the priest. The priest is swallowed 
up in his observances. The saint swallows up observances 
in the ardor of his devotion. Francis had no rest until 
there was an access of grace to his heart. He found it 
beyond the priest, in Christ. In his experience it was that 
he learned his sole reliance upon God. He was of the race 





PULPIT AND PASTORATE 35 


of mystics who know no intermediary between the soul 
and God. He whom they always find there is himself 
God. This gives a sane mysticism, a mysticism which does 
not resolve the moral law into a mist, nor substitute an 
overwrought imagination for the facts of experience. 
Francis kept his head and his heart among the spiritual 
mysteries, but he had his feet always on the earth. He was © 
an ascetic, but he was not gloomy. He was a mystic, but 
he was not morbid. The joy of the Lord was his strength, 
and an abounding joyousness was the stay of his heart. 
Wrung by indescribable pain he still sang hymns of praise, 
and when he saw the end coming he cried out a welcome to 
“Sister Death.” 

4. The saints also have their fruit of the future. They 
are like a tree planted by the rivers of water, whose leaf 
also shall not wither, and whatsoever they do shall prosper. 
Francis planted a seed of holiness in the earth by the 
power of his own holy life. “‘Are you Francis of Assisi?”’ 
asked a peasant whom he encountered in one of his jour- 
neys. ‘Yes,’ replied Francis. ‘‘Then have a care,’’ the 
peasant admonished, “‘that you be as good as men think 
you are.’ “I too have a favorite saint,’’ said Henry 
Wadsworth Longfellow, “St. Francis of Assisi.’’ Ernest 
Renan joined his name with that of Jesus as the two whom 
he most aspired to comprehend. 

Less than two years after the death of Francis, Pope 
Gregory IX, who in his capacity as a cardinal had known 
him well, came to Assisi for the ceremony of his canoniza- 
tion. In twenty-four years after his death his Order em- 
braced 200,000 friars, distributed into twenty-three prov- 
inces, and occupying 8,000 monasteries. 

Seven hundred years after the event great and gracious 
companies of grateful Christian people gathered in Canter- 
bury, some in the Roman Catholic Church of St. Thomas, 


36 PRINCES OF THE PULPIT 


and others in the Anglican Cathedral, to celebrate the 
coming of the friars of Francis, the Joculatores Domini, 
the Jesters of the Lord, to the shores of England. A vessel 
had put in at Dover on September 10, 1224, and disem- 
barked nine men—mostly young—whose fare had been 
paid by Benedictine monks on the other side the channel. 
“They were as queer looking a company as ever landed at 
Dover; bare alike as to head and foot, a long garment 
habited them, tied with a rope. They hadn’t a penny 
among them;... they didn’t possess as much as a walking 
stick in the way of baggage. They had no idea where their 
next meal would come from, but cheerily recalled that the 
ravens once fed Elijah. Coming to Canterbury they were 
banqueted for several days, the sole item on the menu being 
porridge mixed with thick, sour, small beer. If they could 
be either pious or joyous on that, the devil of misery might 
as well quit his job.” And that was just why they had 
come. And thus was the grace and joy of their coming, at 
the celebration of the event, as a cruse of ointment broken, 
and pouring forth its fragrance still in all England. By 
means such as these shall the Christian Church by God’s 
will come at last to the unity for which the Lord prayed. 


II 


SAVONAROLA 
(1452-1498) 


FRoM CouRT TO CLOISTER 


RARELY have the crudities and sublimities both of 
character and of action been more mixed in any man than in 
Fra Girolamo Savonarola. He was a man who raised 
favorable and unfavorable factions toward himself in all 
the great affairs of his life. But were there not factions 
within the man as well as without? Did he not find strange 
contradictions within himself and in his own nature? 

His grandfather, Michele Savonarola, an eminent physi- 
cian of excellent character, was professionally connected 
with the court of the Duke of Ferrara, and there Girolamo, 
son of Niccolo and Elena Savonarola, was bor on Sep- 
tember 21, 1452. His mother was of an illustrious family 
and sustained the part in her own person and character. 
To her he was tenderly devoted, as indeed he was to all his 
family, throughout all his career. The influence of his 
father upon him seems to have been negligible. But from 
his grandfather, whom he was intended to follow in the 
medical profession, he received a wise and tender care. All 
his early training was directed by the intention that he 
should be a doctor; and though this training failed of its 
real purpose it did serve to awaken in him a passion for 
study, and afforded another instance of the principle that 
a talent trained in faithful application to one task may be 
profitably employed in another. At any rate it was a dis- 
tinct gain to him to have become a student. 

The connection of the Savonarola family with the Court 

(37) 


38 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


of Ferrara was not sufficiently close to draw its members 
into the full swell of the court life. It was sufficiently close, 
however, for young Girolamo to be repelled by its excesses. 
The festive proclivities of the court set the fashion for the 
whole city. Courtly opulence set the pace for courtly 
pride and prodigality. A corrupt court has a fatal power to 
corrupt a city and a people. All this glamour of extrava- 
gance and excess reacted powerfully upon the naturally 
melancholy mind of young Savonarola, and drove him 
toward the monastic life. His sad and solitary nature was 
wrought upon to the point of dejection, and thecloister was 
the only immediate means of escape which he knew. He 
spent long, lonely hours in church, and was much addicted 
to fasting. A beautiful young daughter of the Strozzi 
family arose like a star upon the pathway of his life. He 
had his day of beatific dreams and tender hopes, but the 
proud young girl strewed them all in ruins at his feet, and 
disdainfully declined to marry him. No Strozzi might 
stoop to wed a Savonarola. The shafts of melancholy sank 
deeper still into his soul; and his recurrent prayer became: 
‘Lord, make known to me the path my soul should tread.” 

He spent a year of anguish while he contemplated the 
monastic life. Fearing to tell his parents lest he should 
weaken in his purpose, he sat alone amid the fierce conten- 
tions of his soul. ‘‘Had I made my mind known to them,” 
he said, “‘verily my heart would have broken, and I should 
have renounced my purpose.” 

April 24, 1475, was a festival day in Ferrara, and while 
his parents were away in attendance upon the celebration 
he fled from home and set out alone upon a journey to 
Bologna, where he immedtately presented himself for ad- 
mission to the Monastery of St. Dominic. He aspired to 
be neither a monk nor a priest, but asked only to be the 
convent drudge, while he remained among the lay brothers 


; ee 





: 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 39 


and did penance in the lowliest service. He had fled to the 
cloister from the corruption of the world. ‘‘The misery 
of the world and the wickedness of men,” he said, ‘‘I cannot 
endure. Everywhere I see virtue despised and vice ‘hon- 
ored. Many times a day have I repeated to myself with 
tears: Away from this cruel land, this cruel shore, away.” 
Once within the monastery his thoughts turned back to 
his kindred whom he had so unceremoniously left, and he 
wrote to his father, concluding with the words: ‘‘ Dearest 
father, my sorrow is already so great, do not, I pray you, 
add to it by yours! Be strong, seek to comfort my mother, 
and join with her in granting me your blessing.” Ina 
later letter, slightly remonstrant in tone, reflecting no 
doubt the effect of some information he had had from home 
as to how his departure had been taken, and bearing at the 
same time some evidence of the beginnings of a conscious- 
ness of mission on his part, he says: ‘“‘If some temporal 
lord had girt me with a sword, and welcomed me among his 
followers, you would have regarded it as an honor to your 
house, and rejoiced; yet now that the Lord Jesus Christ 
has girt me with his sword, and dubbed me his knight, ye 
shed tears of mourning.”’ 

Villari, whose ‘‘ Life and Times of Savonarola”’ is a very 
fine piece of biographical literature, has the following 
description of his personal appearance: ‘‘ He was of middle 
height, of dark complexion. ... His dark grey eyes were very 
bright, and often flashed fire beneath his black brows; he 
had an aquiline nose and a large mouth. His thick lips 
were compressed in a manner denoting a stubborn firmness 
of purpose; his forehead, already marked with deep fur- 
rows, indicated a mind continually absorbed in meditation 
of serious things. But although his countenance had no 
beauty of line, it expressed a severe nobility of character, 
while a certain melancholy smile endued his harsh features 


40 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


with so benevolent a charm as to inspire confidence at first 
sight. His manners were simple, if uncultured; his lan- 
guage rough and unadorned. But on occasion his homely 
words were animated by a potent fervor that convinced 
and subdued all hearers.” 

The convent consumed seven years of his life. Cloistral 
severity wore him down to hardly more than a fragment of 
what a proper care might have made him, through the ex- 
cess of his fasting and penance. ‘‘ When pacing the cloisters 
he seemed more like a specter than a living man.” He 
carried abstinence to an excess even on days not appointed 
for fasting, slept on a grating furnished with only a sack 
of straw and a blanket, wore the coarsest clothing, though 
he kept scrupulously clean, and “‘in modesty, humility, 
and obedience surpassed all the rest of the brethren.”’ 
He lost, however, his wish to be a drudge, and gained 
through his evident fitness and ability for the task an ap- 
pointment to be an instructor of the convent novitiates. 


A Corrupt AGE AND AN INCORRUPTIBLE MAN 


What determines a man’s life ultimately is not heredity 
but the reaction of his personality toward the forces of 
heredity. What forms his character is not his environ- 
ment, but his reaction to that environment. Savonarola 
might merely have floated on the current of his age as others 
did. He might have been merely a bishop, or a cardinal, 
or a pope, and have given a darker hue to the degradation 
of the age, as so many in these offices did. But hewasaman 
of a far different mold who reacted differently to the influences 
about him. Why did not the glitter of the court life at 
Ferrara attract and hold him? Why did he not fall into 
the categories of Aquinas and Aristotle and perish in a 
desert of metaphysical and scholastic disquisitions? There 
were plenty of men-around him who did this. He had been 


EOERIRSAND, PASTORATE 41 


fascinated by Aquinas in his youth. And he did not escape 
Aristotle even in the cloister. ‘‘He had to be silent per- 
force for years, and to teach the novices, and lecture upon 
philosophy, as if there was no greater evil in the world than 
a defective syllogism; but the great discontent in his mind 
never ceased to smolder until the hour of conflagration 
came.” Ah! there was the difference: ‘the great discon- 
tent of his mind,’’ which could not by any means be forced 
into narrow and stifling monastic molds. 

The age was bred on softness and luxury and lust, revel- 
ing on the one hand in extreme self-indulgence, while it 
sank in misery on the other. Vice vaunted itself. Crime 
was prevalent in every circle, and was “‘set out in rampant 
breadth of color and shameless openness.’”’ Any man 
might dance when the spirit of the age did its piping, and 
profit by its corruption. But here was a man whom it 
could not corrupt. The age had its graces and its gifts, 
to be sure, which gilded its corruption; but it was evil at 
its heart, and sooner or later the heart carries all else with 
it. The time had begun to be touched by the Renaissance. 
It cared for thought, and for many things which compound 
for intellectual satisfaction. It cared for art in its varied 
forms, but had lost the supreme art of living. What ability 
had it to live up to the level of the art of such a man as 
Michelangelo, who was a contemporary of Savonarola? 
Did not this put it to a test almost as severe as that of the 
preaching of Savonarola? What kind of literary taste did 
an age have in which even such a man as Pico della Miran- 
dola could declare that the ‘ Divina Commedia”’ of Dante 
was inferior to the coarse carnival songs of Lorenzo de 
Medici? 

The world was morally so bad that even its own corrupt 
conscience ceased not to accuse it and seemed to set for it 
a deserved day of judgment. ‘A sense of approaching 


42 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


judgment, terror, and punishment, the vengeance of God 
against a world full of iniquity, darkened the very air.” 

These were the times that beat this man’s mind into the 
shape it took and settled his soul in fixed antagonism to 
the evil that was in the world. Should that world beat 
his mind and conscience into conformity to its evil? Or 
should he set to himself the high task of transforming that 
world into the shape of his mind and conscience? Either 
the world will invade the man, or the man must invade 
the world. If aman cannot by any means make himself 
greater than the world, then both the man and the world 
are doomed. ‘‘Greater is he that is in you than he that is 
in the world.” 

Even his life inside the monastery in its deepest resolves 
was a reaction toward and a protest against the world 
outside. He was, in this cloistral seclusion, maturing those 
convictions which alone could have sustained him when in 
the course of events he was called forth to face that world 
in its fortified iniquities. His soul was most of all in revolt 
against the state of the Church. Its debasement and cor- 
ruption appalled him. Intolerably scandalous practices 
had invaded the papacy itself. And yet they were tol- 
erated. Its moral decline, which was to end in its utter 
degradation under Alexander VI, had set in at the death of 
Paul II in 1464. It was publicly asserted that Sixtus IV 
had carried his election by simony, and Rome resounded | 
with the names of those who had bought and sold in the 
papal markets and trafficked in tiaras and tassels, and 
turned spiritual offices into purchasable temporalities. 
What wonder if the very stones of the temple itself cried 
out to be cleansed! Why then should not this melancholy 
man in the monastery have accepted a cardinal’s hat when 
in the turn of events it was offered to him as a bribe? 

Surely offense’s gilded hand had by this time sufficiently 


BUPEL PeAND PASTORATE 43 


shoved by justice to make the precedent clear. But this 
was just what he was preparing not to do. It was under 
the pressure of steadfast resistance to these very practices 
that his career was taking its shape. Official corruption 
always wants conformity, and this was just what Savona- 
rola could not offer. When he came out of the convent it 
was not to conform to the custom of the time, but to chal- 
lenge all its practice. 


FLORENCE 


No city could be counted wholly mean which had thrown 
the shield of its citizenship around Dante, Savonarola, and 
Michelangelo. These three were great enough to make the 
world great, and not alone the city of their habitation. In 
the credulity of the time it was said that the coming of 
Savonarola had been anticipated. A noble citizen of 
Florence passing one morning through the streets with 
some friends felt a stranger pluck him by the garment, and 
when they had turned aside into a church this stranger 
acting thus strangely told him that by the intercession of 
the Virgin a certain Fra Girolamo of Ferrara was coming 
to Florence to save the city from the destruction due to 
her sins. 

Savonarola while still serving within the convent had 
through the increased appreciation felt for him by his 
superiors been raised from the position of instructor to 
that of preacher. As was natural his preaching at first 
differed little from his lecturing. Gradually he drew away 
from Aristotle to the Bible, and under changed conditions 
his preaching began to improve. He was first sent out to 
preach at his native Ferrara, but only found himself a 
victim of the ancient saying that a prophet is not without 
honor save in his own country. The root of real eloquence 
was in him, but it had not yet sprung up. Political dis- 


44 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


turbance scattered the monks from Ferrara, and Savona- 
rola was sent to Florence. But the fair city disdained the 
first glances of regard which he cast upon her. There was 
no form nor comeliness in him that he should be desired. 
He was plain; her people were proud. He was but an un- 
couth friar; she was a cultured city. He was bent on serious 
business; Florence was bent on pleasure. He sensed eter- 
nity in his soul; Florence sensed only the things of time. 
Florence would only hear if she were compelled to; and he 
was not yet able to compel her. In truth, he could not 
preach; and Florence liked preaching of the prevalent sort. 
He had not yet found his message. He had not yet found 
himself. When he finds himself he will also find Florence. 
His espousal to her in the fullness of his affection was 
stronger than death. 

Lorenzo de Medici, utterly abandoned to profligacy and 
prodigality, reigned in Florence at the height of his 
fame and power. Opposition to his rule had been 
either subdued or crushed, and Florence through her 
abandonment to material pleasures and pursuits had ceased 
to care for freedom. She was too deeply enslaved to the 
gratification of lesser desires to retain the power to love 
liberty. The morally profligate cease to care to be political- 
ly free. The city presented what, had it not so frequently 
happened to the contrary, would seem to be the unaccount- 
able antinomy of being cultured but corrupt. 

And so Savonarola did not commend himself to Florence. 
Even now his heart was warm enough. But his speech and 
his manner were rough, and Florence could not tolerate 
the uncouth. She could tolerate corruption if it were cul- 
tured; but she could not tolerate an offer of God’s own 
mercy if it came in a rough garb. His congregations went 
on diminishing until at the last there were only twenty- 
five persons to hear him. He went away, not being too 


BULPIESAND PASTORATE 45 


much depressed, perhaps, by his failure. For he knew the 
causes of it, and would not pay the price others paid as 
a passport to popular favor. Nevertheless to be thus 
checked at a door which he could but feel should have ad- 
mitted him could but have elements of pain in it to a sen- 
sitive soul. 


THE POWER OF A PULPIT 


Savonarola came back to Florence in an unaccustomed 
way. He had gone under appointment of his superiors to 
attend a chapter of the monks of his order held at Reggio. 
He sat in silence in the assembly while dogma was dis- 
cussed, but was deeply aroused by a question of discipline 
which was introduced and spoke with such force and effect | 
as to amaze his audience, and in a special way to attract 
the favorable attention of young Giovanni Pico—known 
when he became a duke as Pico della Mirandola—who was 
already celebrated for his learning and his influence with 
persons of importance. He forthwith became a warm ad- 
mirer of Savonarola, and induced Lorenzo to invite him to 
return to Florence. So to Florence he came again, and re- 
sumed his studies and teaching in the Monastery of St. 
Mark’s, with which, since it was of his own order, he had 
naturally become connected on his first arrival. He had 
been advised on account of the earlier unhappy termination 
of his experience in preaching in Florence to desist from 
preaching entirely, and go back to teaching; and this he 
seems reluctantly to have resolved to do. 

Circumstances on his return to Florence did not tend 
to extricate him from the impasse which he has reached 
with respect to preaching. A monk of the Augustinian 
order was preaching to great audiences in one of the con- 
spicuous churches of the city, and was at the same time in 
high favor with the Medici. His was a style which Savona- 


46 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


rola could not affect, and would not if he could. One of his 
own order said to him: ‘‘ Father, one cannot deny that your 
doctrine is true, useful, and necessary; but your manner of 
delivering it lacks grace, especially as it is daily compared 
with that of Fra Mariano.’”’ He was perhaps impatient of 
his own limitations; nevertheless he uttered a great truth 
when he said in reply: ‘‘These verbal elegancies and orna- 
ments will have to give way to sound doctrine simply 
preached.” 

Still, the verbal elegancies were carrying the day, and 
the man who was the natural rival of Savonarola if he 
should begin to preach again waxed daily in popularity, 
cultivating assiduously all the while those arts and devices 
which might swell the size of his audience. This was ir- 
ritating, no doubt; but it was not convincing to a man 
whose mind was soundly made up on this point. He waited, 
preaching meanwhile only to a small convent audience, 
seeming to entertain an expectation that there would be a 
revelation from God to guide him. 

In 1484 Sixtus IV died and the scandals of the papacy 
increased. In the spring of the same year, and also in the 
next spring, Savonarola was sent as Lenten preacher to the 
little republic of San Gemignano. This expedition was the 
real beginning of his preaching. Out there among the 
Sienese hills he lifted up his voice and his soul was in it, 
and the call of God to men was init. The sermons preached 
on this tour made him known to all Italy, divided though 
it was politically, and established him in his course. 

He retains his modest post as lecturer to the monks of 
St. Mark’s, but is sent out from time to time on these 
preaching excursions. From the Lenten season of 1486 te 
January, 1489, he preached in Lombardy, centering his at- 
tention more particularly upon the Province of Brescia, 
where his sermons achieved a notable success. Writing 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 47 


from here to his mother he begs her ‘‘to forgive him if he 
has nothing but prayers to offer his family, since his re- 
ligious profession precludes him from helping them in other 
ways; but he adds that in his heart he still shares their 
sorrows and their joys.’’ He writes also that he bears 
better fruit than he could have borne at Ferrara. 

Pico had again pressed for his return to Florence; and 
so under orders from his superiors, issued at the request of 
Lorenzo, he appears, in the summer of 1489, once more in 
Florence. Strange adventures attended him on the way, 
what he regarded as a vision having been among them. 
The city itself, however, he could only enter with misgiving. 
At first he occupied himself only with lectures to the friars. 
But since there were laymen who wished to attend he re- 
moved to the convent garden, where his audiences greatly 
increased; and almost without purpose on his part his 
lectures became sermons. The preacher in the man begins 
to find freer utterance. He was entreated to return to the 
pulpit, and on August 1, 1489, he faced an audience in the 
convent church which sat, and stood, and clung to the iron 
gratings in order to see and hear him. 

Murmurs of disapproval and discontent now began to 
be uttered over against the high favor he had already won. 
His preaching was a challenge to agree or disagree, and a 
brand of difference hurled into the midst of those who 
heard him, a complex of attitudes which was speedily ex- 
tended to many who had not heard him. Both he and his 
doctrine were dividers of the people. Neither had any 
commission to be neutral. Discussions of religious doc- 
trines and virtues which he prepared and issued in pamphlet 
form served to make both himself and his position better 
understood, especially among more thoughtful people who 
had the grace and the good sense to take a little time to 
think. More and more, too, he relied upon the Bible and 


48 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


turned to it as an assured declaration of the will of God both 
in matters of doctrine and duty. From his youth he had 
found it the surest guide of his life and consoler of his 
griefs. His fanciful exegesis and elaborate method of ex- 
position cannot command our assent, but the honor he put 
upon the Book may well command our compliance. 
Congregations coming in their eagerness to hear him be- 
gan to crowd St. Mark’s entirely beyond its capacity, and 
in the last of 1491 Savonarola preached in the Duomo, the 
cathedral church of Florence. His preaching thereafter 
became more of a public function and Lorenzo became in- 
volved in it and concerned about it. No man is shrewder 
in forecasting the effect upon the public mind of a serious 
moral movement, particularly if it is a movement sus- 
tained and promoted by Christian preaching, than a crafty 
politician, who just because he depends on craft instead of 
character is never sure of his own position. Henceforth 
there is nothing else which Lorenzo had so much to fear as 
the pulpit of Savonarola, now elevated to cathedral heights. 
Savonarola himself at this time suffered some misgiving 
as to whether it might not be advisable to curb his ten- 
dency to rely upon visions, and also as to whether it might 
not be well to cease his frequent references in the pulpit 
to coming ills. ‘“‘I remember when I was preaching in the 
Duomo in 1491,” he says, “‘and had already composed my 
sermon upon these visions, I determined to omit all men- 
tion of them, and never recur to the subject again. God 
is my witness how I watched and prayed the whole of 
Saturday and throughout the night; but all other ways, all 
doctrines save this, were denied me. ‘Toward break of 
dawn, being weary and dejected by long vigil, I heard, as 
I prayed, a voice saying to me: ‘Fool, dost thou not see 
that it is God’s will thou shouldst continue in the same 
path?’ Wherefore I preached that day a terrible sermon.” 


wre 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 49 


This sermon, which he himself calls terrible, was directed 
to denunciation of the clergy and condemnation of the 
manners of the people. The whole series delivered at this 
time achieved an extraordinary success, and he wrote to 
Fra Domenico, then preaching at Pisa, one of the most 
trusted friends of his life, and afterwards executed with him, 
as follows: ‘‘Our work goes on well, for God helps us mar- 
velously, although the chief men of the city are against us, 
and many fear that we may meet with the fate of Fra 
Bernardino [who had been exiled]. But I have faith in the 
Lord; he gives me daily greater courage and perseverance, 
and I preach the regeneration of the Church, taking the 
Scriptures as my sole guide.” 

An invitation from the political authorities to preach at 
the palace followed the signal success of these latest ser- 
mons; and he preached there, but with a plainness which 
could only be displeasing to Lorenzo. 

His elevation to the office of Prior of St. Mark’s in July, 
1491, gave him the leverage of a more prominent position, 
and at the same time increased his independence. Ac- 
cording to the custom of the time the new prior was due to 
pay a visit of respect to Lorenzo at the palace; but this 
Savonarola promptly declined to do, saying: ‘I consider 
that my election is owed to God alone, and to him alone 
will I vow obedience.’’ Lorenzo was displeased but 
diplomatic. He would not oppose the new convent official, 
but sought to win him by kindness. He came to mass at 
St. Mark’s, and afterwards walked in the convent garden. 
But Savonarola did not stir from his place. When the 


-young friars, stirred by the event, ran to tell him that 


Lorenzo was there, he replied: “If he does not ask for me, 


_ let him go or stay at his pleasure.” It was not that he 


would practice a cheap and superficial disdain toward the 


man, but the severity of his judgment of Lorenzo’s charac- 


4 


50 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


ter that governed his actions. Lorenzo followed up his 
previous amenities by sending gifts to the convent, but 
Savonarola promptly sent his gold, when he found that too 
among the peace offerings, to be distributed among a con- 
gregation of the poor, remarking that silver and copper 
sufficed for the convent; while his contempt for Lorenzo’s 
character could only be aggravated by the procedure. 
Burlamacchi observes that ‘‘Lorenzo was at last convinced 
that this was not the right soil in which to plant vines.” 
Somehow they would not grow. 

Nevertheless, Lorenzo did not desist from his purpose, 
but sent five citizens of renown in Florence to prevail, if 
possible, with Savonarola “‘to change his behavior and man- 
ner of preaching by pointing out to him the dangers he 
was incurring for himself and his convent.’’ But he heard 
the sound of their master’s feet behind them and said: 
‘‘T know that you have not come of your own will, but at 
that of Lorenzo. Bid him to do penance for his sins, for 
the Lord is no respecter of persons, and spares not the 
princes of the earth.’ Veiled threats of banishment left 
him still unmoved. 3 

Chafing under the effect of Savonarola’s increasing in- 
fluence Lorenzo changed his tactics and set up Genazzano, 
a monk and popular preacher of the Augustinian order, as 
a pulpit rival. It was understood that he was especially 
to attack the presumption of uttering prophecies and de- 
claring future events, of which Savonarola was particularly 
guilty; and in any other way that offered itself to discount 
his preaching and disparage the man himself. But his 
butterfly wings were not capable of such a flight. His 
zeal overbore his discretion. ‘‘He draweth the thread of his 
verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.” His 
effort ended in his own discomfiture, while the fame of 
Savonarola was relatively enhanced. 


BULLE LieaAND- PASTORATE Si 


Lorenzo was already seriously diseased and perforce left 
Savonarola and his preaching alone. The latter went on 
his eloquent and triumphant way. The pulpit verbosities, 
rhetoricals, scholasticisms, and theatricals which were the 
current practice he studiously eschewed, and spoke out of 
a heart hot with the passion of his desire for cleaner man- 
ners and a purer Church. There were moments of ecstacy 
which came upon him in his pulpit when his speech was 
sublime in its reach toward the heights of a divine inspira- 
tion. Burlamacchi thus describes the crowding of the 
people to hear him at the Duomo: “‘The people got up in 
the middle of the night to get places for the sermon, and 
came to the door of the cathedral, waiting outside till it 
should be opened, making no account of any inconvenience, 
neither of the cold, nor the wind, nor of standing in winter 
with their feet on the marble; and among them were young 
and old, women and children, of every sort, who came with 
such jubilee and rejoicing that it was bewildering to hear 
them, going to the sermon as to a wedding. Then the 
silence was great in the church, each one going to his place; 
and he who could read, with a taper in his hand, read the 
service and other prayers. And though many thousand 
people were thus collected together, no sound was to be 
heard, not even a ‘hush,’ until the arrival of the children, 
who sang hymns with so much sweetness that heaven 
seemed to have opened. Thus they waited three or four 
hours till the padre entered the pulpit. And the attention 
of so great a mass of people, all with eyes and ears intent 
upon the preacher, was wonderful; they listened so that 
when the sermon reached its end it seemed to them that it 
had scarcely begun.”’ 

It is one of the unaccountable contrasts of history that 
Savonarola and Lorenzo de Medici should have been 
brought into such close and almost unbreakable contact 


OZ PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


with each other. Lorenzo’s disease had now progressed 
to the point that he retired to his pleasant country house 
at Careggi to die. He craved, as he had sore need to do, 
the offices and comforts of religion in his last hours. The 
priests around him could bring him its offices, but not its 
comforts. He sent for Savonarola, saying, ‘I know of no 
honest friar save this one.’ The summons was so sur- 
prising that he doubted whether he should go, thinking that 
he had no word which Lorenzo would heed. However, he 
could but go. Lorenzo explained that there were three sins 
on his conscience which he especially wished to confess. 
According to Villari these were: “‘The sack of Volterra; 
the robbery of the Monte delle Fanctulle, whereby so many 
girls had been driven to a life of shame; and the bloody 
reprisals following the conspiracy of the Pazzi.’ The 
prince was shaken with terror, and the monk gently re- 
minded him of the mercy of God. Then the priest’s face 
grew stern and he solemnly announced the terms of ab- 
solution. Three things were needful: he must exercise a 
sound and living faith; he must make restitution of his ill- 
gotten gains; and he must restore the liberties of Florence. 
At the third, having given his assent to the other two de- 
mands, the death agony deepened, the man struggling in 
the terrible grip of it balked, was silent, and turned his 
face unyielding to the wall. The monk, too, was silent, 
and after a little he turned and quit the room, leaving the 
dying prince unabsolved upon his bed. Strip the scene of 
all its medieval and monkish accessories and it stands still 
as one of the most remarkable ever enacted in the dealings 
of a priest with the soul of a man in all the history of the 
sordidness of sin in human life. The prince could only get 
such terms from the monk as the monk could get from God. 
That at least must be taken as the monk’s understanding 
of the transaction. There on the steep edge of eternity 


BULLET AND: ‘PASTORATE 53 


moral greatness, and conscience with a passion for God, 
towered majestically above the thrones of princes, and the 
petty splendors of this earth sank into vanity and nothing- 
ness. It was a greater tribute to the power of Savonarola’s 
pulpit than all the praises that encompassed and all the 
plaudits that reverberated about that pulpit in Florence, 
and stirred the whole of Italy into admiration, or else into 
censure. The next greatest tribute to the power of that 
pulpit was unwittingly paid by Pope Alexander VI; but we 
come to that later. 


RULING A CITY FROM A CONVENT 


Lorenzo possessed both political acumen and skill, and 
had exercised an influence throughout Italy. His death 
left the government of Florence in the hands of his son, 
Piero, who possessed scarcely any of his father’s gifts, 
while he was addicted to all his vices. Political factions 
immediately arose. The weakening of the government in- 
creased Savonarola’s popular hold. He began to be re- 
garded as the preacher of the party opposed to the rule of 
the Medici, and the very situation in which he was placed 
led many to look to him as the only hope of a free govern- 
ment. The very terror which in the circumstances was 
natural to the public mind magnified his fame, while at the 
same time he himself began once more to be obsessed by 
his belief in visions and his mission as a prophet. The tu- 
mult of political faction rolled on in Florence, disorders mul- 
tiplied, and the sense of public insecurity increased. The 
preaching of Savonarola fell like manna on that wilderness. 
He was the only man who was sure of anything. He was 
sure of too much, to be sure, but that was better than the 
alternative assumed by others of being sure of nothing. 
Around his pulpit alone did it seem possible that any con- 
fidence for the future could be built. He was absent from 


54 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


Florence for a season, and returned only to find his position 
more complicated than ever. Piero wanted to be rid of 
him and undertook to arrange with the ecclesiastical au- 
thorities to send him elsewhere. The scheme failed, and 
Savonarola was reélected Prior of St. Mark’s, and made 
Provincial of the Tuscan congregations of his order. - His 
independence was thereby more definitely assured, and he 
could speak more freely. This involved, of course, the 
obligation to speak more wisely; and whether he uniformly 
did this will ever be the occasion of some debate. He 
bound the cords of discipline closer in his convent, but 
gained power with his monks by enforcing no rigidity of 
requirement which he did not first practice himself. 

In the Advent of 1493 he is again preaching in the Du- 
omo, giving this time a series of sermons—his expository 
method was admirably adapted to serial preaching—which 
Villari says are the most completely representative of all 
that he ever preached. Further reference will be made to 
them in another connection. 

In the autumn of 1494 he carried to a conclusion a famous 
series of sermons on Noah’s Ark which he had begun more 
than two years previously. ‘“‘So extraordinary was the 
effect produced by these sermons on the whole public that 
every day greater numbers thronged to the Duomo.” The 
pitch to which the excitement of the popular mind was 
raised at this time was intensified by the French invasion 
of Italy under Charles VIII. This event Gibbon regarded 
as ‘‘having changed the face of Europe.’’ Many welcomed 
the invaders, among them Savonarola, who believed that 
their presence in Italy would turn out to the advantage of 
the interests which were dear to his heart. As mixed as 
were the elements of political chaos he would often preach 
in the midst of it without any political allusion. Still so 
extraordinary were his gifts as exercised in the midst of an 


RUeEEE AND PASTORATE 55 


extraordinary situation that he could hardly preach a 
sermon vithout acquiring additional ascendancy over the 
popular mind. The French departed, Piero was cast out, 
and the government of Florence fluctuated until at last it 
became a republic, and Savonarola was drawn into the 
arena of politics. The wisdom or unwisdom of his course 
has been the subject of protracted debate. The fact seems 
to be that he could not escape a contingency which his own 
action had largely created. His character and preaching 
had contributed largely to the creation of a situation which 
his mind alone could control. What else did he do but 
obey the pressure of events which were beyond all other con- 
' trol? His political principle was “that no man should receive 
any benefit save by the will of the whole people, who must 
have the sole right of creating magistrates and enacting 
laws.’’ This must be admitted to be a sound principle. 
Whether it was so applied as to secure a sound administra- 
tion is another question. But this is just the practical 
question which always arises in connection with the gov- 
ernment of cities and states. Has nobody heard of it ex- 
cept in this instance? Savonarola preached on the prophe- 
cies of Haggai, as John Knox did in a similar situation, and 
thought he could secure the recognition of religious ideas 
and the operation of religious principles in the conduct of 
the affairs of the state. He scorned the sneering dictum 
that ‘‘states cannot be governed by paternosters,”’ and 
in the opinion of some whose pronouncement cannot be 
flouted gave Florence the best government she ever had. 
His pulpit swayed the city, and his little cell in the convent 
was more powerful than the palace. ‘Jesus is our King, 
Jesus only,’’ shouted the people. ‘‘The aspect of the city 
was completely changed,” says Villari. ‘‘The women 
threw aside their jewels and finery, dressed plainly, bore 
themselves demurely; licentious young Florentines .were 


56 PRINCES ‘OF THE CHRISTIAN 


transformed, as by magic, into sober religious men; pious 
hymns took the place of Lorenzo’s carnival songs. The 
townsfolk passed their leisure hours seated quietly in their 
shops reading either the Bible or Savonarola’s works. All 
prayed frequently, flocked to the churches, and gave largely 
to the poor. Most wonderful of all, bankers and trades- 
men were impelled by scruples of conscience to restore ill- 
gotten gains, amounting to many thousand florins. All 
men were wonderstruck by this singular and almost miracu- 
lous change; and notwithstanding the shattered state of 
his health, Savonarola must have been deeply rejoiced 
to see his people converted to so Christian a mode of life.” 


A JUDGE OF PRINCES, PRIESTS, AND PONTIFFS 


The three thorns in Savonarola’s flesh and the three 
agonies of his spirit were princes, priests, and pontiffs. 
In so far as these shaped the times they shaped by reaction 
his preaching. He had some profiting by the Renaissance, 
which was just reaching Italy. Garvie, in “The Christian 
Preacher,’’ says this “‘helped him to understand the Scrip- 
tures better, and freed him from bondage to the traditions 
of the Church.” But the two great molding influences of 
his ministry, which as we know was so largely a ministry 
of preaching, were the corruption of the Church, abetted 
by the priests, and the profligacy of the times, led by the 
princes. Italy was divided into petty principalities, duke- 
doms, and kingdoms, and suffered greatly from the in- 
competence and evil character of her rulers; while in the 
Church the state of affairs was even worse. ‘‘Italy was the 
prey,’ says Mrs. Oliphant in her ‘‘Makers of Florence,” 
“of petty tyrants and wicked priests; dukes and popes 
vying with each other which could live most lewdly, most 
lavishly, most cruelly, their whole existence an exploita- 
tion of the helpless people they reigned over, or still more 


BULLET AND PASTORATE 57 


helpless ‘flock’ of which these wolves, alas! had got the 
shepherding.” 

Savonarola was not a man born to look obliquely on that 
kind of a situation. In the Advent sermons to which ref- 
erence has already been made he thus probes the lairs of 
lust patronized by the princes: ‘‘ These wicked princes are 
sent to chastise the sins of their subjects; they are truly a 
sad snare for their souls; their courts and palaces are the 
refuge of all the beasts and monsters of the earth, for they 
give shelter to ribalds and malefactors. These wretches 
flock to their halls because it is there that they find ways 
and means to satisfy their evil passions and unbridled 
lusts.” With the priests he deals even more severely: 
“They speak against pride and ambition, yet are plunged 
in both up to the eyes; they preach chastity, and maintain 
concubines; they prescribe fasting, and feast splendidly 
themselves.’’ Let that suffice. His pulpit could establish 
no truce with such men. Still less could he condone the 
conduct of the contemporary popes. Let Sixtus IV pass 
with his simoniacal entrance into his office, while nothing 
whatever is said of others who between the beginning and 
the culmination of this era of corruption ascended for a 
wicked tenancy the debauched and lust-stained throne. 
In 1492 Roderigo Borgia, whose name has defiled every 
page of history on which it was ever written, bribed his 
way into the papacy, and took the title of Alexander VI. 
There were only twenty-three cardinals sitting in the con- 
clave, the election was simply a matter of traffic, and the 
prize went to the highest bidder. His election, though little 
was thought of it in Rome, carried dismay upon the wings 
of the event itself to men everywhere. He debauched all 
Italy, and was fit to contaminate the world. He used his 
office to extend the temporal power of the papacy; and he 
it was who issued the famous bull—for Christopher Colum- 


58 PRINCES OF THE SCOR Tsim 


bus came along at this time—coolly dividing the New World 
between the two papal powers of Spain and Portugal. Two 
of his five illegitimate children—and these were not all the 
evil brood—by Rosa Vanozza were Cesare and Lucrezia, of 
unsurpassed evil fame, who if it were possible might very 
well have been vomited up out of the very contents of 
human history itself. This man it was who at last by vile 
and crafty machinations compassed the death of the great- 
est preacher who appeared in the Church in his time. You 
might as well ask John the Baptist to moderate his words 
to accommodate the lusts of Herod as ask this man to bow 
to the will of so profligate a pope. The very existence of 
such a man and his very presence in a Christian pulpit 
constitute him a judge of such profligates as were the 
princes, priests, and popes of his time. 

The pain would be greater than the profit were we to 
undertake to follow all the details of the tedious process by 
which the pope and the priests on the one hand and the 
princes on the other, for nearly all of them were at last 
combined against him, brought Savonarola finally into 
their clutches and haled him before their judgment seat. 
Factions multiplied and plots thickened around him. His 
principal opponents in Florence were the Arrabbiatt, or 
followers of the Medici. Ludovico, the powerful Duke of 
Milan, entered the lists against him on the side of the 
princes. There was a jealous rivalry between the Fran- 
ciscan and the Dominican monks, and Savonarola had to 
bear the brunt of the dislike of the former for his order. 
He had also many enemies of a lesser sort, both personal 
and factional, and both political and ecclesiastical. Of 
any or all of these the pope was ready to make the most 
unscrupulous use. He proceeded more warily at first, 
however, than to act upon the policy of open enmity, and 
complaisantly tried to entice Savonarola to come to Rome. 


Peitl i yAND PASTORATE 59 


But in vain was this net spread in the sight of the bird he 
wished to capture. Savonarola himself, however, was 
diplomatic enough to evade this invitation without an 
open rupture. The acts of the drama now move back and 
forth between Rome and Florence, and involve many in 
Italy besides. The validity of the pope’s election was at- 
tacked, and Savonarola joined in. In the meantime on the 
initiative of some of the civil authorities in Florence he is 
nominated as Lenten preacher for 1496. It was hoped 
“that he would adopt a more temperate tone toward 
Rome.” So also hoped the pope, and quickly seizing the 
opportunity to foster such a disposition, if by any means 
it should exist, he offered to raise the troublesome monk to 
the dignity of a cardinal, ‘‘on condition that he would 
henceforth change the tone of his sermons.’ But cheap as 
it seemed, the thing was too costly. The seductiveness of 
the proposal could not conceal its cowardly and contemp- 
tible character, and the conscience of the man had rejected 
it before his ears heard it. ‘‘I tell ye,” said he in asermona 
little while after this abortive transaction, ‘‘that had I 
desired such things, I should not be wearing a tattered 
robe at this hour. . . . Neither miters nor cardinals’ hats 
would I have, but only the gift thou hast conferred on thy 
saints—death, a crimson hat, a hat reddened with blood; 
that is my desire.” In his address he had turned from the 
people to God. He was now so invested with danger on 
every hand that he was not safe in the streets, nor even in 
his pulpit in the cathedral. Nevertheless, he went promptly 
thither and fulfilled the Lenten engagement to which ref- 
erence has already been made, preaching a series of sermons 
on Amos and Zechariah which had such a setting as it has 
rarely been permitted to discourses from a Christian pulpit 
to have. 


60 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


ARREST, TRIAL, AND EXECUTION 


The story of the arrest, trial, and execution is a long and 
involved one, and must be subjected to severe condensa- 
tion. The pope now followed Lorenzo in fearing nothing 
else so much as he feared the pulpit of Savonarola; and 
when all else had failed he struck at its freedom, and even 
at its very existence, with his ban of excommunication. 
His rage had broken all bounds when he had learned that 
Savonarola was fomenting the calling of a council to deal 
with ecclesiastical matters. The hope of the promoters of 
such a council, of course, was that the affairs of the papacy 
itself might be dealt with. The excommunication dragged 
the slow length of its execution along. It accomplished 
only in part its design of setting a seal upon the lips of the 
man at whom it was aimed. The burning of the vanities 
in Florence under the influence of the pulpit of the Duomo 
occurred after the ban was issued. 

Opportunity to accomplish the arrest was afforded by 
the failure of the ordeal of fire proposed by a Franciscan 
against any participating Dominican. The political au- 
thorities speedily became accomplices in the plot, the 
whole surreptitious aim of which was the discomfiture and 
possible destruction of Savonarola. If the test failed on his 
part, the immediate penalty was to be his banishment. 
He weakly and foolishly consented to a piece of superstition 
and folly which he really did not approve. Elaborate 
preparations were made. A maudlin and highly excited 
crowd assembled. Fra Domenico appeared on behalf of 
Savonarola, and submitted to be stripped of nearly every 
arrangement he had made for the test, these consisting for 
the most part of objects of devotion. The representative 
of the Franciscans upon various pretexts was detained at 
the palace until the day had worn away. A cloud and 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 61 


thunderstorm arose. The impatience of the crowd was 
exhausted and tended to violence. Word came from the 
palace that the ordeal could not come off. Savonarola and 
his people barely escaped to St. Mark’s. A tumult was 
raised, and before the night was far gone a riot ensued. 
Two entirely innocent and defenseless men were foully 
murdered as the mob made its way to the convent. The 
convent itself was assaulted and sacked in the most san- 
guinary manner. A demand came from the city authorities 
that Savonarola and two of his monks, Domenico and Sil- 
vestro, should submit to arrest. They were led away in 
the darkness to prison. The purpose of the whole nefarious 
scheme had unfolded itself, and had been all too success- 
fully accomplished. 

The charges against the accused turned in the main upon 
three points—his prophecies and visions, his religious at- 
titude, and his political action. The severity of his pro- 
longed examination and the cruelty of the torture to which 
he was subjected pass all temperate description. An eye- 
witness stated that he saw him submitted to fourteen turns 
of the rack in one day. Again in his cell, left for the time 
free of physical torture, while he only gained a little 
strength to be carried back to the rack, he would be tor- 
tured in his thoughts as he reflected on how he may have 
weakened under the stern behoof of his suffering. It 
might be wished that he had proved firmer in some ways— 
if, indeed, under the circumstances this was humanly 
possible—but nobody believes that in moments when he 
was himself he ever wavered. His trial itself, in spite of 
all the processes of cruelty and fraud which were instituted, 
proved him innocent. Domenico, too, had stood out brave- 
ly through all the course of the trial, but Silvestro had 
wavered. 

The verdict of the court turned out as it was destined to 


-- 


62 PRINCES OF THE: CHRISting 


do. Then came commissioners from Rome to add the papal 
seal to the transaction. ‘‘I bear the sentence with me, al- 
ready prepared,”’ said one of them, before the trial under 
their jurisdiction began. The same refinements of torture, 
and prolongation of the agony of soul which had charac- 
terized the civil trial, were not wanting in the ecclesiastical 
procedure. Out of the swift mills of their justice the same 
verdict was ground. Efforts had been made to secure from 
Savonarola a confession which might bear the semblance 
of the lowest level of honesty, which were so crafty, cunning, 
and malicious that it might be supposed that they could 
hardly ever secure the forgiveness of either God or man. . 
The sentence of their condemnation was to the effect 
that they should be hung and then burned. When mes- 
sengers entered his cell to notify him of his fate they 
found Savonarola on his knees in prayer. This was his 
answer to all their malice. He asked to be allowed to see 
his companions, and the request was granted. They had 
their last communion and were led out as sheep to the 
slaughter. A long scaffold had been built from the palace 
toward the Piazza, or public square, with a gibbet at the 
end. Three platforms for distinguished spectators were 
erected along the way. The three friars were stripped of 
their robes, and were left clothed in only a coarse tunic, a 
cruel indignity for which they were not prepared because 
they had not expected it. At the first platform they paused 
while the Bishop of Vasona pronounced their degradation. 
At the second platform the Papal Commissioners and repre- 
sentatives of the civil government of Florence thrust their 
last daggers at them. But they were clad in an armor which 
human hate and contempt could no longer pierce. They 
moved on to the gibbet at the end of the platform. ‘‘Three 
halters and three chains hung from its arms, the first to 
hang the friars, the second to keep their corpses suspended 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 63 


over the fire in which they were to be consumed. Heaps of 
combustibles were piled at the foot of the stake, and the 
guards of the Signory found great difficulty in keeping 
back the surging multitude who pressed round the scaf- 
fold.”’ Silvestro suffered first, and then Domenico, the 
extremity of suffering having been reserved for Savonarola, 
in that he must witness the death of his companions. All 
of them met death with a courage and a calm which con- 
quered all its terrors. Their ashes and charred remains 
were gathered up and borne on a cart through the streets of 
the city and thrown into the Arno. 

How pathetic and impotent are our human attempts at 
the appraisal of the courage and contempt of the world, and 
of the undimmed and undiminishing moral worth of such 
a man as was this at the last friendless friar of a different 
and difficult age now long gone by. ‘Even in the city of 
Dante,” says Mrs. Oliphant, ‘‘no greater figure has its 
dwelling. The shadow of him lies still across those sunny 
squares and the streets through which in triumph and in 
agony he went upon his lofty way; and consecrates alike 
the little cell in San Marco and the little prison in the tower, 
and the great hall built for his great Council, which in a 
beautiful poetic justice received the first Italian parliament. 
. . . Thus, only four hundred years too late, his noble 
patriotism had its reward. Too late! though they do not 
count the golden years in that land where God’s great 
servants wait to see the fruit of their labors—and have it, 
sooner or later, as the centuries come and go.” 

The last descent in the degradation of a people is that 
they crucify their prophets and saviors. Lines recently 
written on Lincoln might very well have their application 
to Savonarola and his time: 


PRINCESS OF sTHE SPUR 


“Ve never knew him. 
All the trenchant years 
When the deep furrows of his pilgrim plow 
Turned the encumbered acres to the sun, 
It was a dread and solitary way. 
Upon his heart there was a burden lay 
Like that upon the carpenter’s young Son 
In Galilee ... There was a bitter cup 
Pressed to his silent, unrefraining lips. 


They never knew him. 

Lonely, on a height, 

Asking no man if this be wrong or right— 
No measure of expedience or thrift 

To stay his soul’s indentured elements— 
He was apprenticed of his own desire 
Unto the attribute of sacrifice, 

And counting all a righteous heritage.” 


ITI 


WILLIAM TYNDALE! 
(1490-1536) 
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE BIBLE IN ENGLISH 


THE flow of the Thames past London is not to be ac- 
counted more important commercially than the entrance 
of the Bible to the English language is important to the 
life, literature, and religion of the English people. The 
city came to the river, and the river built the city. Con- 
trariwise, the Bible came to the language and lenge built 
the language. 

There were attempts at translation in the Anglo-Saxon 
era of the language. These, however, covered only small 
portions of the Scriptures, and could hardly have been in- 
tended for other use than to be read in the churches. Ead- 
helm early in the eighth century is credited by some with a 
translation of the Psalms, and at his request, it is said, 
Egbert at the same time translated the Gospels. Surpass- 
ing both of these, however, alike in interest and importance 
was the work of Beda, or the Venerable Bede, as he came 
more familiarly to be called. An aged monk of Yarrow 
was he, the most famous scholar of Western Europe in 
his day, who in his “‘Ecclesiastical History”’ furnishes the 
chief source of our knowledge of ancient England. On the 
evening of Ascension Day in the year 735 he lay dying in 
his little monastic cell surrounded by a group of fair-haired 
Saxon youths to whom he dictated in a race with death his 
translation of the Gospel of John. ‘‘He began then to 
suffer much in his breath, and a swelling came in his feet, 


1Reprinted from Methodist Quarterly Review, April, 1925. 
> . (65) 


66 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


but he went on dictating to his scribe. ‘Go on quickly,’ 
he said; ‘I know not how long IJ shall hold out, or how soon 
my Master will call me hence.’ All night long he lay awake 
in thanksgiving; and when the Ascension Day dawned, he 
commanded us to write with all speed what he had begun.” 
The account has come down from one of the sorrowing 
group which stood about the dying man’s bed. “There 
remains but one chapter, master,’”’ said the anxious scribe; 
‘but it seems very hard for you to speak.” ‘Nay, it is 
easy,’’ Bede replied; ‘‘take up thy pen and write quickly.” 
Through blinding tears the scribe wrote on. ‘“‘And now, 
father,’’ said he, ‘‘only one sentence remains.’ Bede dic- 
tated it. ‘‘It is finished, master!’’ cried the youth. “Ay, it 
is finished,” returned the dying saint; and he asked to be 
lifted up to the window of his cell where he had so often 
prayed, whence at the end of the long, hard day he was 
caught away to his everlasting rest. 

When King Alfred the Great in the tenth century laid 
his hand to the task of a firmer building of the English 
state, he incorporated the Ten Commandments in his own 
translation as a part of the organic law of the land. The 
instrument is headed ‘‘Alfred’s Dooms,”’ and begins in 
the following fashion: “‘The dooms which the Almighty 
. Himself spake to Moses, and gave him to keep, and after 
our Saviour Christ came to earth, he said he came not to 
break or forbid, but to keep them.’’ And then follow the 
Ten Commandments. 

Toward the end of the tenth century there were a few 
other translators, among them Archbishop A#lfric, but the 
work of none of them attained to any particular importance. 

There was then a long interval occupied by the Danish 
invasion and the Norman conquest. The higher Saxon 
clergy were removed and Norman priests with little sym- 
pathy for the people were put in their place, so that the 


BULPIC AND -PASTORATE 67 


impulse to translate was stifled. For centuries the Scrip- 
tures remained in England “‘a spring shut up, a fountain 
sealed.”’ 

In the meantime the Saxon speech was going out and 
modern English beginning to come in. It has been roughly 
agreed that about the year 1150 A.D. should be fixed upon 
as marking the final decline of the pure Saxon, while the 
more clearly defined English came in about 1250, the lan- 
guage during the intervening century having been a sort of 
semi-Saxon. 

Then the dawn of the Reformation began to lighten the 
sky. Its morning star was John Wycliffe. While the Scrip- 
tures waited at the threshold to be admitted to their full 
rights in the English language, the language itself was de- 
veloping. Now again, as has so frequently recurred at 
epochal dates in the affairs of men and nations, a child was 
born who in the maturity of his powers should lift his hand 
to the task which history required. At the hands of Wyc- 
liffe England received for the first time the entire Word of 
God in the language of the people. But, alas! by a mon- 
strous perversion of the fine English liberty which had 
burned in the soul of Alfred, and which was to burst into 
a finer flame in millions that were yet to be, his deed had 
grown to be an ecclesiastical crime; and ecclesiastical 
hatred pursued his very bones to their burial, and having 
committed his body to the flames, gave his ashes to the 
wide waste of cold and heedless waters, as if with an insane 
desire to consign the man himself to an irretrievable obliv- 
ion. But every wave sprinkled with his dust did but bear 
his name to a brighter fame. Whatever men might do to 
him dead, living he had effected a threefold change with 
respect to the Bible in England: instead of in fragments, 
it should exist entire; instead of being buried in a dead lan- 
guage, it should now speak to Englishmen in the language 


Apabea ee PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


wherein they were born; and instead of exerting its in- 
fluence under the restraints and limitations of ecclesiastical 
sanction, it was to be open and accessible to clergy and laity 
alike. 
ENGLAND FouR HUNDRED YEARS AGO 

The England of four hundred years ago was on the other 
side of Shakespeare and Milton and the whole Elizabethan 
age. But more significant still, it was on the other side of 
the Protestant Reformation. The controversies these 
translators had to wage against priestly intolerance, the 
contests and conflicts in which they had to engage with 
their Bible-burning opponents, the exile they had to en- 
dure, the privations they had to suffer, the contumely they 
had to bear, the hate they had to encounter, the deaths so 
vengefully dealt out to them were all rooted in that pal- 
pable fact. Think of the time when it was a crime for an 
Englishman to sell, to purchase, or to read a copy of the 
New Testament in his native tongue, when it was a law of 
Convocation, if not of Parliament, that the Bible could not 
be translated into the English language except under se- 
vere and really prohibitive ecclesiastical restrictions—and 
all this in a day when Convocation was superior to Parlia- 
ment and the Pope superior to the King, even in the state. 
In Convocation at Oxford in 1408 the following action was 
taken: ‘‘We therefore decree and ordain that no man here- 
after by his own authority translate any text of the Scrip- 
ture into English, or any other tongue, by way of a book, 
pamphlet, or treatise; and that no man read any such 
book, pamphlet, or treatise, now lately composed in the 
time of John Wycliffe, .. . upon pain of greater excom- 
munication, until the said translation be approved by the 
ordinary of the place, or, if the case so require, by the coun- 
cil provincial.’’ Let no true Englishman in too great pride 


PULPIT AND. PASTORATE 69 


of later liberty and achievement forget the hole of the pit 
whence he was digged. Neither need undue derision be 
cast upon Romish intolerance, superstition, and the pro- 
clivity to persecute; for Protestantism has had as large a 
share in all these as it need care to claim. But Protestant- 
ism in the real sources of its authority has not been in- 
tolerant toward the translation of the Scriptures into the 
tongue of the people, nor interdicted their free circulation. 
And it would be difficult to prove that this has not been a 
fixed difference between the two forms of religious belief 
and propaganda. 

It should be said, furthermore, as tending to modify 
the severity of our judgment of the Romish rule of the 
times, that the whole position of the Bible in the Middle 
Ages was an anomalous one. It existed for use even in the 
Church only in the Latin language, and outside the ritual 
of the Church it could hardly be said to have a use at all. 
And though it was in the ritual, it was there only as a 
subordinate part of the service. Employed in a tongue 
unknown to the people, it could only convey to them a 
distant and ritualistic and ineffectual impression. The 
Church held the Scriptures in trust for the instruction and 
edification of the people, only they were neither instructed 
nor edified. 

The state of the Church at this time, and the consequent 
state of the nation as dominated by the Church, has to be 
described first of all in terms of the ignorance of the clergy. 
The Latin language in which their services were rendered 
was unknown even to many of them, so that to hear them 
rendered by another profited them no more than it did the 
illiterate people. Their ignorance expressed in general 
terms was bad enough, but they seem to have specialized 
in ignorance of the Scriptures. “‘Alas!’’ said Tyndale in 
the preface to ‘‘'The Obedience of a Christian Man,” “‘the 


70 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


curates themselves, for the most part, wot no more what 
the New or Old Testament meaneth than do the Turks— 
neither care they but to mumble so much every day as the 
pie and popinjay speak, they wot not what to fill their 
bellies withal. If they will not let layman have the Word 
of God in his mother tongue, yet let the priests have it, 
which for the great part of them do understand no Latin 
at all. but sing and patter all day with the lips only that 
which the heart understandeth not.’’ The study of the 
Bible did not even form a part of the preliminary prepara- 
tion of the priests; and if they were ignorant of the lan- 
guage in which it was written how could they acquire any 
knowledge of it afterwards, even if they were so minded? 
Not long after Tyndale’s time John Hooper, Bishop of 
Gloucester, who later died for the principles of the Reforma- 
tion, made a visitation of his diocese, which included the 
county in which Tyndale was born, and reported to Cecil, 
then Secretary of State, that he had examined 311 clergy, 
and “found no less than 168 of them unable to repeat the 
Ten Commandments, 31 ignorant of whence the Decalogue 
came, 40 who could not repeat the Lord’s Prayer, and about 
the same number who did not even know to whom it should 
be ascirbed.”” And this ignorance only grows more dense 
when it is remembered that what they could not repeat 
many of them could not even read because of their ig- 
norance of the language in which the ritual was written. 
But ignorance was not the worst of it. The state of the 
times has to be further described in terms of the sloth and 
corruption of the clergy. ‘‘What man of real piety,” ex- 
claims Erasmus in a preface to his “Enchiridion,” ‘‘does 
not perceive, with sighs, that this is far the most corrupt 
of all ages? When did ever tyranny or avarice prevail more 
widely or with greater impunity? When was more impor- 
tance ever attached to mere ceremonies? When did 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 71 


iniquity abound with more licentiousness? When was 
charity more cold? What is read, what is said, what is 
heard, what is decreed, except that which savors of am- 
bition and gain?” Says Demaus: ‘A priest might be a 
gambler, a fighter, totally ignorant, entirely immersed in 
secular affairs, a sycophant, a liar, a calumniator, and yet 
might escape blame if only he were careful to observe that 
enforced law of celibacy, which, though a law of the Church 
only, and not an ordinance of God, was deemed of more 
consequence than any other qualification in the clergy.” 
But Hugh Latimer reaches the climax of trenchant accusa- 
tion against the clergy. Preaching to an assembly of 
bishops at Paul’s Cross, he said: ‘‘ Who is the most diligent 
prelate in all England? I will tell you: it is the devil. Of 
all the pack of them that have cure, the devil shall go for 
my money, for he ordereth his business. Wherefore, you 
unpreaching prelates, learn of the devil diligence. If you 
will not learn of God, for shame learn of the devil.’’ Ab- 
sentee bishops, who if they were not corrupt were covetous 
—and what can more corrupt a priest than covetousness?— 
did not much conduce to either the enlightenment or moral 
improvement of the lesser clergy. When Latimer came to 
Tyndale’s native county in 1535 as Bishop of Worcester 
there had not been a resident bishop of the diocese since 
PAD: 

Out of clerical ignorance and corruption only superstition 
and the bad brood of its attendant evils can issue. When 
rites and ceremonies are taken out of their proper place as 
aids to religion and made substitutes for it, superstition 
takes the field. Rites and ceremonies are not in themselves 
to be rejected; but when there is lost out of them all that 
moral meaning which led to their original institution, they 
become not merely negatively valueless, but positively cor- 
rupting in their observance. So it was in the age with 


72 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


which we are dealing. ‘‘Religion had degenerated into an 
unprofitable round of superstitious customs and ceremonial 
observances. The service of the Church was so intricate 
that the study of years was necessary to enable either priests 
or people to perform it aright. The use and moral teaching 
of these ceremonies, moreover, had become entirely ob- 
solete; their original function in the Church was completely 
gone; they had ceased to be in any sense aids to devotion, 
and were impediments to all true religion.” If further 
testimony were required, we might obtain it from Cardinal 
Bellarmine. He writes as follows: ““Some years before the 
rise of the Lutheran heresy there was almost an entire 
abandonment of equity in ecclesiastical judgments, in 
morals no discipline, in sacred literature no erudition, in 
divine things no reverence: religion was almost extinct.” 

In such conditions nothing is so disturbing as the light. 
So Tyndale saw it. The service which he rendered to Eng- 
land, and ultimately to all the English-speaking world, 
consisted in his unerring ability to see that for his land and 
his people the one way out of all this ignorance, vanity, 
pretense, hypocrisy, superstition, and their related moral 
and religious corruption was to make the English plowboy 
able to read the Word of God in his own tongue. This was 
to strike down priestcraft and ignorance and false ritualism 
and superstition and corruption at one blow. 


TYNDALE AT OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE 


Foxe, in his “‘Acts and Monuments’’—popularly known 
as his ‘Book of Martyrs’’—which is our only source of 
knowledge for Tyndale’s early life, is content simply to 
state that, “‘touching the birth and parentage of this blessed 
martyr of Christ, he was born about the borders of Wales.” 
This parsimonious bit of information has been supple- 
mented from other sources until it has been pretty clearly 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 73 


made out that Gloucester was the county of his birth. The 
date of his birth is likewise obscure. Demaus thinks it 
must be fixed between 1490 and 1495. Paterson Smyth 
names 1483. Hoare thinks it could not have been later 
than 1490. Westcott says that ‘‘of the early life of Tyn- 
dale we know nothing,’ but goes on to say that ‘‘he was 
born about 1484, at an obscure village in Gloucestershire.” 

Of his attendance at the University of Oxford there is 
abundant evidence, both from the records of the University 
and from other sources. ‘‘ William Tyndale,’ says Foxe, 
“was... brought up from a child in the University of 
Oxford, where he grew and increased as well in the knowl- 
edge of tongues, and other liberal arts, as especially in the 
knowledge of the Scriptures, whereunto his mind was singular- 
ly addicted.’ His mind, in being singularly addicted to the 
Scriptures and in its aptitude for the acquisition of lan- 
guages, was stretching forward, whether consciously or 
not, toward the accomplishment of the great ends of his 
life. Later in life, arguing for the right to translate the 
Scriptures, he himself reproduced a prophetic page out of the 
book of his early recollections. ‘‘Except my memory fail 
me,’’ said he, “‘and that I have forgotten what I read when I 
was a child, thou shalt find in the English chronicle, how 
that King Athelstane caused the Holy Scripture to be 
translated into the tongue that then was in England, and 
how the prelates exhorted him thereto.”’ 

The new learning had already been released by the 
Renaissance when Tyndale came to Oxford. John Colet, a 
chief promoter of the spread of this learning in England, a 
distinguished theological and classical scholar, and a har- 
binger of the Reformation, had but recently quitted Oxford 
for the post of Dean of St. Paul’s, in London. While in 
the University he had rendered a notable service to the 
institution, and in part, at least, to the nation, through the 


74 PRINCES OF THE CHRIS 


delivery of a very able and attractive course of lectures on 
the Epistles of St. Paul, by means of which he sought to 
revive the historical and devotional study of the Bible. 
Into an atmosphere charged with this influence Tyndale 
came to pursue his studies. He entered the University 
sometime in the course of the year 1510, and was graduated 
as a Master of Arts in 1515. Noconsiderable advancement, 
however, could he have received in the subjects and aims 
of a real education. The disappointment and indignation 
which he felt with respect to the provision made in the 
universities in the beginning of the sixteenth century for the 
training of men for the ministry found a vehement voice 
in one of his later books. Even the more moderate Eras- 
mus could say: ‘‘Theology, once venerable and full of 
majesty, had become almost dumb, poor, and in rags.” 
Tyndale left Oxford for Cambridge for reasons which 
have never been definitely assigned. But he had some 
profiting here also; for as Colet had sown the seeds of the 
new learning at Oxford, Erasmus had sown them at Cam- 
bridge. Erasmus had just left Cambridge, where he had 
not found the atmosphere conducive to a longer stay. He 
had only temperament where, fortunately, Tyndale had 
temper; for temper is more likely to change conditions 
than temperament. Nevertheless, Erasmus was himself a 
conspicuously noble and serviceable man, and “of the 
New Learning in its intellectual aspects he was the very 
incarnation.”’ Neither Colet nor Erasmus had in him the 
elements of a reformer, nor much sympathy with the 
popular desire for a change in England. Still what they 
did not do need not be suffered to discount too seriously 
what they did do. Thus much at least on the subject of 
the translation of the Scriptures Erasmus boldly said: 
“T totally dissent from those who are unwilling that the 
sacred Scriptures, translated into the vulgar tongue, should 


Buleeiie AND PASTORATE 75 


be read by private individuals. I would wish even all 
women to read the Gospel, and the Epistles of Paul. I 
wish they were translated into all languages of the people. 
I wish that the husbandman might sing parts of them at 
his plow, and the weaver at his shuttle, and that the trav- 
eler might beguile with their narration the weariness of 
his way.” 

Tyndale would mature at Cambridge the knowledge of 
Greek and Latin which he had begun at Oxford; and he 
would eventually have access to the Greek New Testament 
of Erasmus, which was issued in 1516, shortly after he 
came to Cambridge. This act on the part of Erasmus was 
in itself a challenge to the sacrosanct order of things, for 
hitherto the inviolability of the Vulgate had been accepted 
without question. And yet this cultivated scholar avoided 
a break with the pope, and steadfastly held aloof from the 
Reformation. 


THE PRACTICE OF THE PRELATES PROVOKES PROTEST 


Once more the veil of uncertainty which hung about so 
many of the events and actions of Tyndale’s life intervenes. 
‘The same uncertainty that we have so often had occasion 
to regret, rests upon the reasons which induced Tyndale 
to leave Cambridge,’ says Demaus. Whither he went, 
however, is well known. He became a tutor to the children 
of John Walsh, a knight of Gloucestershire, a man of 
character and ability, as well as of position, who was dis- 
posed to use the influence both of his character and his 
position in Tyndale’s interest. Here in the manor house of 
Little Sodbury, home of the Walshes, he remained for more 
than two years, in a situation which as surely matured and 
deepened his convictions in the direction which they had 
already begun to take as if he had chosen it for that end. 
There was not much tutoring to do, for the children were 


76 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


too young. If he had been called chaplain to the Walshes 
instead of tutor to their children, it would perhaps more ap- 
propriately have described his position. He was again in 
his native county, one of the most priest-ridden in England, 
so that both the present and the past of his life tended to 
arouse reflection. He began to see the Church as it existed 
outside academic circles in its daily operation among the 
masses. Above all he had a realizing contact with the 
clergy which could but disclose to such a mind as his the 
inherent weakness of current priestly practice and dis- 
cipline. We have already seen in another connection that 
the bishop of the diocese who was responsible for the spir- 
itual oversight of the population into the midst of which 
Tyndale’s lot had now been cast lived a thousand miles 
away in Italy. Wolsey, also nonresident, was Cardinal, 
and Parker was Chancellor of the diocese, and between the 
two the duties of the diocese suffered worse things than 
episcopal neglect. Of the ignorance and arrogance of the 
resident clergy Tyndale now obtained direct knowledge. 
Sir John Walsh dispensed a liberal hospitality to the ec- 
clesiastical magnates of the neighborhood, and between 
these on the one side and Tyndale on the other there were 
warm disputations at Sir John’s table. ‘‘Wherein as those 
men and Master Tyndale did vary in opinions and judg- 
ments,” says Foxe, “‘then Master Tyndale would show 
them on the book the places by open and manifest Scrip- 
ture; the which continued for a certain season divers and 
sundry times, until in the continuance thereof those great 
beneficed doctors waxed weary and bore a secret grudge in 
their hearts again Master Tyndale.’’ Whereupon these 
same doctors had Master Walsh and his lady away to dine 
with them, a plate for Tyndale having been prudently 
omitted from the table. After their return from the ban- 
quet they called for Tyndale, and Mrs. Walsh, who, Foxe 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 77 


naively says, was a stout woman, asked him whether he 
thought it were better they should believe him before those 
who were “‘so great, learned, and beneficed men.” Tyn- 
dale himself was not much beneficed, to be sure, either ec- 
clesiastically or financially. Mrs. Walsh had reminded him 
that some of these great beneficed men had as much as 
three hundred pounds a year at their disposal; while he 
could scarcely escape the reflection that he had only a 
tutor’s allowance. But he was wise if not beneficed, and 
for the time refrained from an answer. Coming again to 
Mrs. Walsh he showed her that the great Erasmus, the 
most illustrious scholar in Europe, held opinions the same 
as his own. And so, though the opinions did not convince, 
Erasmus did. By his patience and discretion he won the 
Walshes, but only the more provoked the bitter resent- 
ment of the clergy. 

Tyndale also began to preach in the adjacent villages, and 
in the city of Bristol which lay not very far away. This 
brought the opposition of the clergy to an unwonted pitch, 
and they secretly accused him to the chancellor of the 
diocese, who, as we have seen, was the intolerant. and in- 
tolerable Parker. Tyndale, “in his going thitherwards, 
prayed in his mind heartily to God to strengthen him to 
stand fast in the truth of His Word.”’ He came uninjured 
out of this contest, but was more than ever convinced that 
the opposition of the clergy arose out of their ignorance— 
they were “a full ignorant sort’’—and also that these men 
_about him here in Gloucestershire were but too faithful 
representatives of the mind that was dominant in the rulers 
of the Church at large. In the state of perplexity which 
was thus raised in his mind he went to consult “‘a certain 
doctor that dwelt not very far off, and that had been an 
old chancellor before to a bishop.” Having fully divulged 
the contents of his mind, he heard this astonishing reply: 


78 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


“Do you not know that the Pope is the very Antichrist 
which the Scripture speaketh of? But beware what you 
say; for if you shall be perceived to be of that opinion, it 
will cost you your life. J have been an officer of his, but I 
have given it up and defy him and all his works.” This 
statement, surprising as it was, seemed but a settling of the 
thoughts of Tyndale’s own mind, and it formed an epoch 
in his life. Under the influence of reflections such as these 
he began seriously to contemplate the translation of the 
New Testament into the English tongue as the one possible 
means of correcting the abuses which, unless something 
were done, could only abound more and more. 

Whatever may have been the particular processes by 
which his purposes were formed, he was at no pains to 
conceal them; for while disputing with a certain learned 
man who, under his merciless prodding, was brought to 
the limit and said, ‘‘We were better without God’s laws 
than without the Pope’s,’”’ he immediately and irrevocably 
joined the issue by saying: ‘‘I defy the Pope and all his 
laws. If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a 
boy that driveth the plow shall know more of the Scripture 
than thou dost.” 


TYNDALE AND TUNSTALL 


Tyndale had now a purpose which he could count more 
important than his life. Still his life was bound up with 
this purpose, and he would no longer be safe in Little Sod- 
bury. However, he would not go out seeking safety alone. 
He would go out seeking primarily the accomplishment 
of his purpose. He could not translate and print the Scrip- 
tures anywhere without episcopal sanction. Besides he 
needed a shelter, and some scanty means of support, if 
he could not find what was more liberal. Hewas concerned 
about these things only as means to an end. Cuthbert 


PUEETT AND’ PASTORATE 79 


Tunstall was then Bishop of London. He was reputed to 
be a friend of learning. He had a great house and ample 
means as things went in those days. He could easily af- 
ford Tyndale the assistance he needed, whether of material 
support or official sanction. Surely so goodly a design as his 
could not knock in vain at episcopal gates. He came, there- 
fore, to London, and waited until he couldseethe bishop. In 
the meantime he had precarious employment as a preacher 
at St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West. Hither chanced to come at 
preaching time Humphrey Monmouth, a rich London 
merchant, who resided in another parish; and his soul was 
knit to Tyndale. “I heard,’ he afterwards wrote to Wol- 
sey out of the prison into which he had been thrown for 
protecting Tyndale—‘‘I heard the foresaid preach two or 
three sermons, and after that I chanced to meet him and 
examined what living he had. He said he had none at all.”’ 

Tunstall at last received Tyndale, but gave him neither 
sanction nor encouragement. His house was full. He had 
as many around him as he could feed. Doubtless there 
were places to be found in London. Tyndale at first was 
bitterly disappointed. But afterwards he thought better 
of the wisdom of the Lord’s way and wrote: “‘God saw that 
I was beguiled, and that that counsel was not the nearest 
way to my purpose; and, therefore, he gat me no favor in 
my lord’s sight.”’ 

Tyndale now turned to Monmouth. ‘The priest came 
again to me,’’ says the latter, ‘‘and besought me to help 
him, and so I took him into my house half a year, and there 
he lived like a good priest, as methought. He studied 
most part of the day and of the night at his book. I did 
promise him ten pounds sterling to pray for my father and 
mother, their souls, and all Christian souls. I did pay it 
him when he made exchange to Hamburg. Afterwards he 
got off some other men some ten pounds more, the which 


80 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


he left with me.” Thus it was that he found board, and 
shelter, and a generous friend, at whose table he met mer- 
chants of London and of the country towns, and others from 
abroad. If the hierarchy in London will not help, God and 
the merchants will. If England will not shelter him, he has 
learned that there are lands abroad which will perchance 
prove more hospitable. At length he says pathetically: 
“T understood that not only was there no room in my lord 
of London’s palace to translate the New Testament, but 
also that there was no place to do tt 1n all England.” 


AN EXILE FOR THE WorRD OF GoD 


‘“T . .. was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the 
Word of God and the testimony of Jesus,”’ said an earlier 
exile. Though Tyndale’s exile was voluntary, he was as 
really a sufferer for his fidelity to the Word of God as was 
John upon Patmos. He had learned from the merchants 
he met in Monmouth’s house of the possibilities of trade 
and printing abroad. He could both print his translation 
there and get it back to England. Forth he went, there- 
fore, beyond the reach of Tunstall’s or any other English 
bishop’s jurisdiction. How much of his translation he had 
completed when he left London for Hamburg is not known. 
Where he spent the time from his arrival in Hamburg till 
April, 1525, is also uncertain. Perhaps it were better to 
follow his contemporaries than his later biographers and 
to conclude that he was in Wittenberg, where he would 
see much of Luther. 

In the spring of 1525, having received the ten pounds he 
had left on deposit with Monmouth, he went to Cologne 
to print his New Testament. He had contracted for 3,000 
copies of a small quarto edition with a prologue, references, 
marginal notes, and divisions into chapters, and the print- 
ing was well under way when his design was discovered, and 


mecbll AND PASTORATE 81 


he and his amanuensis, William Roye, had a bare chance 
to escape with the sheets which had been already printed. 
John Cochleeus, who had fled from Frankfort to escape the 
peasants’ insurrection, was sojourning in Cologne, and 
bringing out from the same press which Tyndale employed 
a book of his own. He was a good hater of Luther and all 
the principles of reform, and enjoyed a proportionate es- 
teem among the Roman Catholics. He chanced to hear 
Tyndale’s printers boasting over their cups that before 
long all England would become Lutheran. Here was a 
cue not be lost. Inviting the printers to his lodging, he 
drugged them with wine until one of them was induced to 
divulge the full secret of Tyndale’s purpose to print the 
New Testament and circulate it in England. The informa- 
tion thus elicited Cochlzeus promptly laid before the Senate 
of Cologne, and the authorities of Church and State in 
England were warned. 

From Cologne Tyndale proceeded with Roye to Worms, 
now strongly Lutheran, and changed his plans for printing. 
He chose an octavo form as being easier to conceal, and 
cut out everything except the text of the Scripture itself. 
In truth, the marginal glosses were particularly offensive 
to the opposition in that they were decidedly anti-Romish. 
It was proposed again to print 3,000 copies, and an edition 
of the same number of copies in the quarto form was also 
printed at about the same time. The vigilance of the op- 
position to Bible printing and distribution in England, 
which was carried on for the most part under the direction 
of Cardinal Wolsey, is certified in the fact that of 15,000 
(some say 18,000) copies of Tyndale’s New Testament 
printed between 1525 and 1528 only a mutilated fragment 
of the quarto edition and two copies of the octavo edition 
are now in existence. 

The books were secretly conveyed to England bound up 


82 PRINCES: OF THE CHRIsGiar 


with other forms of merchandise. Some went in bales of 
cloth, some in barrels, and some even in sacks of flour. A 
system of colportage organized in England diligently dis- 
tributed them. Efforts were made to buy them up before 
they were shipped. An interesting chronicle of the time 
tells about this. The merchants, of course, were friendly 
to Tyndale, or he could hardly have proceeded at all. One 
of them, Augustine Pakington, who traded at Antwerp, a 
secret friend of Tyndale’s, was approached by the Bishop 
of London and asked his opinion about buying up all the 
books on the other side. ‘‘My lord,” replied Pakington, 
“if it be your pleasure, I could do in this matter probably 
more than any merchant in England; so if it be your lord- 
ship’s pleasure to pay for them—for I must disburse money 
for them—I will insure you to have every book that re- 
mains unsold.” ‘‘Gentle Master Pakington,’’ continued 
the bishop, ‘do your diligence and get them for me, and I 
will gladly give you whatever they may cost, for the books 
are naughty, and I intend surely to destroy them all, and 
to burn them at Paul’s Cross.” 

A little while after Pakington came to Tyndale and said: 
‘‘Master Tyndale, I have found you a good purchaser for 
your books.”’ ‘‘Who is he?” Tyndale promptly asked. 
‘‘My lord of London,’ came the answer. ‘‘But if the 
bishop wants the books it must be only to burn them,” 
protested Tyndale. ‘Well, what of that?” Pakington re- 
joined. “The bishop will burn them anyhow, and it is 
best that you should have the money for to enable you to 
imprint others instead.” When the books came still faster 
into England, the bishop sent for Pakington and asked 
how it was that they were still so abundant. ‘‘My lord,” 
replied the shrewd merchant, ‘it were best for your lord- 
ship to buy up the stamps too by the which ek are 
printed.” 


Purl AND: PASTORATE 83 


A conclave of bishops under the presidency of the 
cardinal met and condemned the books to be burned; and 
Tunstall was appointed to preach at Paul’s Cross in London 
and to denounce the translation as full of all manner of 
errors and heresies. A written episcopal injunction was 
issued charging that the maintainers of Luther’s sect had 
“craftily translated the New Testament into our English 
tongue, .. . seducing the simple people, attempting by their 
wicked and perverse interpretations to profane the majesty 
of the Scripture, which hitherto had remained undefiled, 
and craftily to abuse the most holy Word of God.” As if 
to make the pile of obloquy cast upon the Word of God 
complete, Henry VIII lent the royal seal to the demand 
that Tyndale’s translation should be burnt. But the Bible 
had gotten into the English language, and had found a 
habitat there from which it was never to be cast out, wheth- 
er by buying it up or burning it. In this connection it 
should be remembered that ‘before the end of the fif- 
teenth century Bibles were printed in Spanish, Italian, 
French, Dutch, German, and Bohemian; while England 
had as yet only the few manuscripts of the Wycliffe ver- 
sions.” 

Some time in the year 1527 Tyndale came to Marburg, 
where reforming influences were in the ascendancy, and 
published two of his most important books, ‘‘The Parable 
of the Wicked Mammon” and ‘‘The Obedience of a Chris- 
tian Man.” Each of these in its own way advanced the 
interests of the Reformation. The former was really a 
treatise on the doctrine of justification by faith, while the 
latter dealt with some of the important political principles 
of the movement. It was an especial service of ‘‘The 
Obedience”’ that it made the issue clearer between medi- 
zvalism and reform. ‘‘From this time forward,’ says 
Demaus, ‘‘the Reformers in England had a definite aim 


84 PRINCES OF THE CHRIS Ei 


and purpose; and the goal being once placed before them, 
their progress became steady and rapid.” 

By the end of 1529 Tyndale’s translation of the Penta- 
teuch was ready for the printer. This work has been ad- 
judged to be hardly less important than his New Testa- 
ment. He has thus moved on as steadily as he might 
toward the completion of his project of rendering the whole 
Bible into the English language. 

Prelates were a continual provocation to Tyndale. Noth- 
ing was more irksome to him than their practices. What 
could be more natural, therefore, than that in the course of 
events he should write a book on “‘The Practice of Prel- 
ates’? It was natural also that this should be the most 
severely controversial of all his books. He here gives vent 
to an indignation which might have been expressed in 
language more restrained. Or shall it be said that, if provo- 
cation is in anywise to be the measure of indignation, he 
has a sound plea in extenuation? The book was too severe, 
and withal too true, to be allowed to pass unnoticed by 
Tyndale’s opponents, and the challenge was taken up by 
Sir Thomas More, one of the most accomplished English- 
men of his time, and a man not without many marked ex- 
cellencies of character. He was instigated by Tunstall, 
but was easily capable on his own account, if he so willed, 
to proceed to the attack upon Tyndale and his book. His 
rejoinder was not without wit, nor yet without worth; but 
it must pass here without further comment. Tyndale in 
reply hardly did justice either to himself or his cause. 


CASTING THE NETOF A CRAFTY AND MALEVOLENT PURSUIT 


Attempts began now to be made to induce Tyndale to 
return to England. But he might well doubt the sincerity 
of any profession of kindly intention toward himself; and 
all the more so as measures against the Reformers became 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 85 


more stringent. Vaughan, who came as envoy to Antwerp, 
with this object as a special charge, found Tyndale again 
there, but could not move him. He did, however, utter 
these noble words: ‘“‘I assure you if it would stand with the 
King’s most gracious pleasure to grant only a bare text of 
the Scripture to be put forth among his people, ... be it the 
translation of what person soever shall please his Majesty, 
I shall immediately make faithful promise never to write 
more, nor abide two days in these parts after the same; 
but immediately to repair into his realm, and there most 
humbly submit myself at the feet of his Royal Majesty, 
offering my body to suffer what pain or torture, yea, what 
death his Grace will, so that this be obtained.” 

A change in both men and methods was now introduced 
into the design to bring Tyndale back to England. Vaughan 
was one of those men whose principles do not readily stoop 
to a mean undertaking. The possession of such principles 
renders a man inconvenient and undesirable to the con- 
trivers of dark designs. A man more to their purpose, a 
man more practicable because less principled, was now 
found by the originators of the plot in the person of Sir 
Thomas Elyot. The plot becomes more ignoble both in 
design and execution. Tyndale is no longer to be per- 
suaded, but to be apprehended. But by the strategy of 
wandering from place to place, clothing his movements the 
while with all possible secrecy, he managed still to escape 
detection. | 

At this juncture John Frith, closest and dearest and most 
comforting of all Tyndale’s personal friends, was treach- 
erously seized on account of his reforming opinions, and 
committed to the Tower in London. Without knowing of 
his arrest Tyndale had written a letter of caution to Frith, 
but it came too late. The temper of Frith’s mind and the 
mold of the man, with his friendship for Tyndale, are seen 


86 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


in his response to a wish expressed by More that the Re- 
formers would keep their opinions secret: ‘Until we see 
some means found by the which a reasonable Reformation 
may be had, and sufficient instruction for the poor com- 
moners, I assure you IJ neither will nor can cease to speak; 
for the Word of God boileth in my body like a fervent fire, and 
will needs have issue, and breaketh out when occasion ts given. 
But this hath been offered you, ts offered, and shall be offered: 
Grant that the Word of God, I mean the text of Scripture, may 
go abroad in our English tongue, as other nations have it 1 
their tongues, and my brother William Tyndale and I have 
done, and we will promise you to writeno more. If you will 
not grant this condition, then will we be doing while we have 
breath, and show in few words what the Scripture doth in 
many, and so at the least save some.’’ Such a man was too 
_ brave to live in the suspicious and accusing atmosphere of 
his time. 

Foxe describes Tyndale in his later life at Antwerp as 
“‘a man very frugal and spare of body, a great student, an 
earnest laborer in setting forth the Scriptures of God.” 
Two days in the week he gave to the visitation of distressed 
and neglected people of whatever sort—exiles from England 
driven forth by persecution, aged and poor people, un- 
cared-for children, and the needy of every condition. On 
Sundays he ‘“‘went to some one merchant’s chamber or 
other, whither came many other merchants, and unto them 
would he read some one parcel of Scripture: the which pro- 
ceeded so fruitfully, sweetly, and gently from him, much 
like to the writing of John the Evangelist, that it was a 
heavenly comfort and joy to the audience to hear-him read 
the Scriptures; likewise after dinner he spent an hour in 
the same manner.” 

These English merchants bent upon their business in 
Antwerp were to Tyndale as the ravens sent to feed Elijah 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 87 


in the wilderness. The house of one of them in particular 
where he had a fixed domicile, that of Thomas Poyntz, was 
a haven of refuge to him. But not even here was he to be 
left unmolested. Things had greatly changed in England, 
particularly in the matter of the establishment of the 
royal supremacy over the papal. But this did not turn 
out to Tyndale’s advantage, for neither king nor pope had 
been friendly to him. On the other hand his immediate 
situation had now grown worse, for the Inquisition had 
reached the Netherlands, and it would fare ill with him if 
he fell into the hands of the authorities there. These au- 
thorities, however, were not likely to take the initiative in 
proceeding againsthim. His real danger lay still in England. 
The whole despicable plot against him originated there. 
Henry Philips, himself a priest, came over as the latest 
agent of the plotters. Tyndale was accustomed to go out 
to dine with merchants other than his host, and this gave 
Philips a means of contact with him. Poyntz doubted and 
mistrusted Philips from the first, and warned Tyndale. 
But he appeared to be very favorable to Protestant views, 
and finally deceived Poyntz himself. Procuring the at- 
tendance of officers from Brussels, and choosing a time when 
Poyntz was away from home, he vilely consummated his 
plot. Having completely deceived Tyndale as to the minor 
details of the plot, he proceeded with him from the house of 
Poyntz as if they would go out to dine together. 

Foxe, who had the story from Poyntz, continues his ac- 
count as follows: “‘At the going out of Poyntz’ house was a 
long narrow entry, so that two could not go in a front. 
Master Tyndale would have put Philips before him, but 
Philips would in nowise, but put Master Tyndale afore; 
for that he pretended to show great humanity. So Master 
Tyndale, being a man of no great stature, went before; and 
Philips, a tall comely person, followed behind him, who 


88 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


had set officers on either side of the door upon two seats 
(which, being there, might see who came into the entry); 
and coming through the entry Philips pointed over Master 
Tyndale’s head down to him, that the officers, which sat 
at the door, might see that it was he whom they should 
take.”’ 

Tyndale lay for sixteen months in the Castle of Vilvorde, 
awaiting the fatal issue. Out of his comfortless prison he 
made a pathetic appeal for a warmer cap, to be found in 
his own scanty supply of goods, for the relief of a perpetual 
catarrh in his head; for a warmer coat, for the one he had 
was very thin; and that he might be permitted to have a 
candle to light the cheerless gloom of the evening while he 
sat alone before the accustomed hours of sleep. 

Poyntz nobly adventured his own life if by any means 
he might be of assistance to Tyndale, but at length was 
thrown into prison himself. Vaughan would gladly have 
seen him released, but could do nothing. His case seemed 
to go on as if it were in the hands of a pitiless fate. But 
there are those who know that there are great acts of God 
done within the shadows which for the time shut out our 
seeing. 

There was special provision for the trial of a heretic, and 
the case of Tyndale was put upon this process. No record 
of the trial has been preserved. It would not be difficult 
for the Romanists to make out from his own printed words 
a strong case against him from their standpoint, and this 
they were diligent to do. Prominent among his accusers, 
and one of the most relentless in his opposition to him, was 
the Chancellor of the University of Louvain. 

On October 6, 1536, he was bound and strangled at the 
stake, and his body, still in the posture in which it was 
strangled, was immediately burned. ‘‘He cried out at the 
stake,’’ as Foxe says, who preserves this detail alone of 


PUpPit AND PASTORATE 89 


his death, ‘‘with a fervent zeal and a loud voice, ‘Lord, 
open the King of England’s eyes!’”’ 


TYNDALE AS A TRANSLATOR 


“With Tyndale the history of our present English Bible 
begins,’ says Westcott. He was the first to take the 
original languages of the Scriptures as the basis of his 
work; and his translation was the first to have the ad- 
vantage of the printing press for its reoroduction and dis- 
tribution. 

The slender apparatus with which he labored tends 
toward tenuity contrasted with the elaborate equipment 
of more modern translators. Grammars and _ lexicons 
were few, inferior, and difficult to obtain. - He had the 
Greek New Testament of Erasmus, but the great manu- 
scripts employed in more recent translations were not then 
known to exist. He had the Vulgate, and would have also 
the Latin New Testament of Erasmus, and Luther’s 
German Bible. But what else worth while could he have 
had? 

In the matter of the scholarship required he was capable, 
as the event proves; but he was compelled to rely on his 
sole ability and skill as a translator. No august company 
of revisers under royal pleasure and sanction sat in state 
around a table. There sat this lone man alone save for the 
presence of William Roye, his amanuensis, helping, but 
also hindering in some ways, as Tyndale himself testifies: 
‘“‘As long as he had no money, somewhat I could rule him; 
but as soon as he had gotten him money, he became like 
himself again. Nevertheless, I suffered all things till that 
was ended which I could not do alone without one, both to 
write and to help me compare the texts together.” 

Somehow the man got the purity of his motive and the 
loftiness of his own high purpose into his translation. He 


he 


90 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


had his delicate sense of language, and his sound scholar- 
ship in the languages; but above all else he had a heart 
singularly devoted to the Word which he handled. He was 
of the high company of those who have washed their hands 
in innocency because they fain would compass the altars of 
God. Writing out of his exile to John Frith, then in jeop- 
ardy of his life, he said: ‘‘For I call God to record against 
the day we shall appear before our Lord Jesus, to give a 
record of our doings, that I never altered one syllable of 
God’s Word against my conscience, nor would this day, 
if all that is in the earth, whether it be pleasure, honor, or 
riches, might be given me.’ His total translation covered 
the New Testament and half the Old; and in the same spirit 
would he have finished the whole Bible had he lived. He 
aimed to bring the knowledge of God through his Word 
down to the level of the plowboy’s comprehension, but he 
descended to nothing low, or coarse, or trivial in doing so. 
As Westcott has finely said: “Instead of lowering his trans- 
lation to a vulgar dialect, he lifted up the common language 
to the grand simplicity of his own idiom.” 

In pursuance of his high endeavor he labored assiduously 
at the revision of his translation, which he might have left 
alone once it had been made and printed, and left as the 
crowning achievement of his toil, and his manifold disap- 
pointments, and his exile, and the sublimity of his self- 
effacement, his revised New Testament. 

His permanent impress upon the English Bible is his 
lasting monument. ‘“‘Of the translation itself,’’ writes 
Froude in his “‘History of England,” ‘‘though since that 
time it has been many times revised and altered, we may 
say that it is substantially the Bible with which we are 
familiar. The peculiar genius—if such a word may be 
permitted—which breathes through it, the mingled tender- 
ness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the preternatural 


Peer it AND PASTORATE 91 


grandeur, unequaled, unapproached, in the attempted im- 
provements of modern scholars—all are here, and bear the 
impress of the mind of one man—William Tyndale.” No 
other individual trace is so deeply fixed upon it. None of 
the other versions, from Coverdale to King James, says 
Dr. E. J. Goodspeed, ‘‘is any more than a cautious re- 
vision of Tyndale; he is rightly called the Father of the 
King James Version, for in nine-tenths of its New Testa- 
ment his translation is copied; and his stamp remains on the 
modern revisions of 1881 and 1901. To the familiar forms 
of the New Testament Tyndale has contributed not only 
more than any other man, but more than all others com- 
bined. He has shaped the religious vocabulary of the 
English-speaking world.” Lift up any sheet of the English 
New Testament in any of its important versions and it 
bears the watermark Tyndale. 

A metre epochal event espoused by a single man has 
seldom if ever issued in English history than when William 
Tyndale translated and published his English Bible and 
risked the very breath which was at last strangled out of 
his nostrils to do it. Some will think it extravagant, but 
all who have truly appraised the higher values of English 
law and liberty and literature and life will think it but 
sober truth to say that whether it were from her literature 
or her religion England could as well afford to expunge 
Shakespeare or Milton as Tyndale from her annals. 


IV 
JOHN KNOX! 
(1505-1572) 


THERE are men who refuse to go down into the demure 
annals of history and to rest idly and forgotten there. 
They have still their task to do, and still their call to our 
consideration. Among these John Knox, whose living task 
was to make Scotland Protestant, is not the least. It was 
said that ‘‘ Knox made Scotland Protestant, but Melville 
made it Presbyterian.”” Certain it is that Knox made it 
Protestant. Probably it should have become Protestant 
anyway, but not so soon nor after so thoroughgoing a 
fashion as Knox made it. No other man of the time could 
have made the Scotland he made. And probably no other 
country of the time could have made him the man he was, 
for he was a genuine Scotsman. 


BECOMING PROTESTANT AND A PREACHER 


His career up to the time that he entered the Protestant 
ministry at forty-two years of age (or was it thirty-two?) 
was not conspicuously eventful. He was born in the county > 
of East Lothian, near Haddington, in the year 1505. He 
entered the University of Glasgow in 1522—or at any rate 
a person of that name appears among the incorporated 
students of the university for that year. Whether he was 
graduated from the institution is doubtful. Doubt, in- | 
deed, is thrown upon the whole matter of his university 
attendance by the uncertainty which attaches to the knowl- 
edge of certain incidents of his early life. The date even 


1Reprinted from Methodist Quarterly Review, January, 1923. 
(92) 


PENG ESOP THE, PUEPEL 93 


of his birth is not definitely known, some authorities placing 
it as late as 1515. Heseems to have entered the priesthood 
of the Roman Catholic Church, though this point admits 
some doubt. However, it is clear that his proper vocation 
at this time was that of a private tutor of youth. 

His first attachment to the cause of Protestantism was 
shown through his connection with George Wishart, one 
of the early Scotch martyrs to that cause. Wishart, indeed, 
was Knox’s forerunner, Knox having accompanied him 
closely for a time on his missionary tours, carrying a two- 
handed sword with which he held himself in readiness to 
strike down any Romish assailant of the intrepid Wishart. 
When Wishart was arrested and carried before Cardinal 
Beaton for trial, Knox would have gone with him, but 
Wishart dissuaded him, saying: ‘‘Nay, return to your 
bairns [his pupils]; one is sufficient for a sacrifice.” Wishart 
at length was slain, and three months afterwards a small 
band of men broke into the Castle of St. Andrew’s and slew 
Cardinal Beaton, who was domiciled there both in his 
personal and in his official capacity. The stronghold was 
held and became a refuge for the Protestants, though not 
all of them approved the method of the taking away of the 
Cardinal. Knox himself had nothing to do with the murder 
of Beaton, though there is no evidence that he was much 
grieved by his removal. For his own and his pupils’ safety 
he entered with them into the Castle about Easter of 1557. 

This Castle presented an anomalous situation, though it 
was but a reflection of the state of the times. ‘‘Here was 
an unorganized assembly of reformers, not formally out 
of the old Church, gathered about a nucleus of armed men, 
who had upon them the guilt of Beaton’s assassination; 
and were maintaining themselves by force against the 
government; and they had called as their preachers an 
ex-monk, John Rough, and an ex-priest, John Knox. But 


94 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


irregularities were not of much weight to men who felt 
sure of the truth they held, and believed they were doing 
God’s will.” 

It was this Castle that became a retreat to Knox and a 
school to him and his pupils. As a part of his curriculum 
he gave daily in the chapel at a certain hour a lecture in a 
series on the Gospel of John. ‘This public exercise was 
freely attended by a large number of those who had taken 
refuge in the Castle. Very promptly certain leaders among 
them recognized Knox’s fitness for the work of the ministry, 
and they urged him to take it up. But he as promptly re- 
fused. ‘‘He would not run where God had not called him.” 
Their conviction, however, that he should preach was not 
to be so easily brought to naught. Hence they arranged 
that on a certain day John Rough, who was pastor of the 
Castle Church, should make a public appeal to him. Ac- 
cordingly, on the appointed day, Rough, having preached a 
sermon on the election of ministers, turned to Knox in the 
presence of them all, and thus addressed him: “Brother, 
ye shall not be offended albeit that I speak unto you that 
which I have in charge, even from all those that are here 
present, which is this: In the name of God and of his Son 
Jesus Christ, and in the name of those that presently call 
you by my mouth, I charge you that ye refuse not this 
holy vocation, but that, as ye tender the glory of God, the 
increase of Christ’s kingdom, the edification of your 
brethen, and the comfort of me, whom you understand 
well enough to be oppressed by the multitude of labors, 
that ye take upon you the public office and charge of 
preaching, even as ye look to avoid God’s heavy displeasure, 
and desire that he shall multiply his graces with you.” 
Then turning to the congregation he said: ‘‘Was not this 
your charge to me?”’ They answered: “It was, and we 
approve it.’ Knox was overwhelmed by this unexpected 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 95 


proceeding. He burst into a flood of tears, left the as- 
sembled company, and retired to his closet. 

Thus Knox was called, and thus he came into the min- 
istry. It was quite an unusual entrance for a man to make 
even to the office and work of a preacher of the gospel. 
Nothing could be lacking in the depth of his persuasion 
that he followed, not his own will, nor the will of man, but 
the will of God. And there could be no doubt of the in- 
fluence it would exercise upon the whole course and charac- 
ter of his ministry. His first sermon placed him at once in 
the foremost rank of Scottish Reformers, and men began 
freely to predict that he would follow Wishart to the 
martyr’s stake. “‘Master George Wishart spake never so 
plainly,’ they said, “‘and yet he was burnt: even so will 
he be.”’ 


IN THE GALLEYS AND EXILED IN ENGLAND 


After a very brief exercise of his new commission in the 
Castle and in the town of St. Andrew’s Knox’s work was in- 
terrupted by the arrival of a French fleet, which quickly 
compelled the surrender of the Castle with all its inmates. 
According to the terms of their surrender their lives were 
to be spared and they were to be deported to France, from 
which, if they were not satisfied with the terms offered by 
the French king, they were to be allowed to depart to any 
country except Scotland. But faith was not kept with 
heretics in those days, and Knox and his companions were 
made galley slaves. The tortures of this unspeakable 
servitude he endured for nineteen months. ‘He had to sit 
chained with four or six others to the rowing benches, which 
were set at right angles to the side of the ship, without 
change of posture by day, and compelled to sleep, still 
chained, under the benches by night; exposed to the ele- 
ments day and night alike; enduring the lash of the over- 


96 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


seer, who paced up and down the gangway which ran be- 
tween the two lines of benches; feeding on the insufficient 
meals of coarse biscuit and porridge of oil and beans; 
chained along with the vilest malefactors.’”’ This was the 
method the French invented for bringing under those who 
differed from them in religion. It was hardly a suitable 
means to effect the conversion of a man like John Knox. 
One hope he kept alive in his heart through all the 
torment he suffered in the galleys and that was that he 
might return to Scotland to preach again before he de- 
parted this life. 

Release of the prisoners from the galleys was secured 
through the instrumentality of the English government 
early in the year 1549, and Knox spent five years in Eng- 
land under the reign of King Edward. He was among the 
greatest preachers of England at the time and exerted an 
influence which endured for generations. Much of the 
powerful Puritan sentiment which appeared in the Church 
of England has been ascribed to the influence he exercised 
within the space of his brief ministry there. The vigor of 
his ministry and his courageous activity brought him into 
conflict with the Bishop of Durham, Tunstall, but Knox so 
clearly had the better of the controversy that episcopal op- 
position subsided. He was offered the bishopric of Roches- 
ter, and again an important vicarage, but declined both, 
and was actually brought before the Privy Council to ex- 
plain why he would not accept preferment. But through 
it all, whether quite consciously to himself or not, he was 
refusing to be bound. He was keeping his great spirit free 
to exercise the ministry of the Lord. The Council told 
him they were “sorry he was of a contrary mind to the 
common order.” He replied that he was even more sorry 
that ‘‘the common order’’ was contrary to the institution 


Peer PANDY PASTORATE 97 


of Christ. He could not accept episcopacy and other Angli- 
can arrangements as scriptural. 

Knox had accepted an appointment as a royal chaplain, 
and it is reported that when he came in his turn to dis- 
charge the functions of that office he discharged his duties as 
well. High officials about the king were known to be 
notoriously corrupt. Knox said in his sermon: ‘‘What 
wonder is it that a young and innocent king be deceived by 
crafty, covetous, wicked, and ungodly councilors? I am 
greatly afraid that Ahithophel is councilor, that Judas 
bears the purse, and that Shebna is scribe, controller, and 
treasurer.” 

The accession of Mary Tudor, an intense and persecuting 
Roman Catholic, to the throne closed his career in England, 
though he remained on the field when others quit it. He 
was present in London when Mary entered the capital, and 
had the courage, when none other did have, to rebuke the 
rejoicings of the crowd at her appearance. 


CONTINENTAL CONTACTS 


Since Knox could not yet return to Scotland, his course 
now led him across the English Channel, and by unknown 
ways through France until he came to Geneva. He spent 
some time with Calvin, and, with the exception of several 
months occupied with a visit to Scotland in 1555, he so- 
journed for about five years on the Continent. They were 
years fruitful in preparation for his future work in Scot- 
land. He formed the acquaintance and had opportunity 
to study the character of the leading Protestants of France 
and of Switzerland, and obtained a knowledge of the inner 
political condition of the nations of Europe. Above all, 
these years taught him, as Lindsay says, that the fate of 
the whole Reformation movement was bound up with the 
formation of an alliance between Protestant England and 

7 


98 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


Protestant Scotland. In the midst of these years on the 
Continent he spent a part of his time as the pasta of the 
English congregation at Geneva. 

It came to pass in the course of events that women were 
reigning both in Scotland and England, and in France as 
well. Knox did not look very favorably upon these fem- 
inine monarchs. He had made such a favorable impression 
in the beginning of his ministry in Scotland that influential 
leaders of the Reformation there had been constantly seek- 
ing to make an opportunity to have him return. In pur- 
suance of their plans Knox came to Dieppe in October, 
1557, on his return to Scotland. There he was intercepted 
by letters telling him that the time was not yet ripe for his 
return. Chafing at this delay, he wrote his tart pamphlet 
on ‘‘The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous 
Regiment of Women.” It was the worse for Knox and for 
Scotland that the reign of women had begun. Nevertheless 
his pamphlet was very ill-timed. Naturally it would alien- 
ate still further both Mary Stuart and Mary Tudor. But 
worse still for Knox, Elizabeth soon came to the throne in 
England, and there could be none whom Knox would more 
wish to conciliate than the Protestant Queen of England. 
This the pamphlet did not tend todo. Rather she resented 
it as having been intended for her. She never forgave either 
' Knox or the pamphlet, and the latter was a continual 
obstacle to a complete understanding between Knox and 
his English allies. Knox himself said, though never pub- 
licly or to either of the queens more directly involved, but 
only to a personal friend, that his ‘‘rude vehemence and 
unconsidered affirmations, which may rather appear to 
proceed from choler than of zeal and reason,’’ he did not 
excuse. 

The time had now drawn on to the eve of Knox’s return 
to Scotland. He perhaps had lost less time than he thought 


PeLblLbPAND PASTORATE 99 


he had. He had all along been making better time than 
he thought he had. No time is better spent than that 
absorbed in wise preparation. And if Providence prepares 
the instrument, time is still necessary. Knox came back 
to Scotland with an untried equipment to be sure, but 
nevertheless with a preparation most wisely made. And 
it was a preparation which had its bearing not only upon 
the work of the Reformation, but also upon his pulpit work. 
“With him everything he had and learned was made to 
contribute to his pulpit. That was the throne of his 
peculiar and preéminent power, and the treasures of travel, 
as well as the accumulations of study and observation, 
were made to contribute to his efficiency therein.”” And 
these aids to pulpit power he had acquired on the Con- 
tinent. 


SCOTLAND ONCE MORE AND THE REFORMATION 
STRENGTHENED 


Knox landed at Leith on his final return to Scotland in 
May, 1559. In all his exile, whether in the galleys of 
France or in the midst of his sojourn in Geneva, Scotland 
had been on his heart. When a prisoner in the galleys he 
had predicted that he would one day preach again in St. 
Andrew’s, where he had been so reluctantly drawn into that 
ministry which he now so zealously discharged. The good 
results of his last visit to Scotland had conspicuously ap- 
peared, and the leaders there had longed for his return. On 
his arrival he found that the Queen had altered her policy, 
and that now instead of tolerating the Reformers she had 
joined hands with the authorities of the Roman Church to 
suppress them. What with the opposition of the Romanists 
and certain indiscretions and excesses of the Reformers 
themselves the task of gaining for the Protestant cause a 
secure footing in the land was one of tremendous difficulty. 


100 PRINCES (OR THE CHES ia 


There ensued, in truth, a state of civil warfare, and the 
lines on the one side and on the other were sharply drawn. 
After a sermon by Knox in Perth a priest had insolently 
undertaken to celebrate the mass in the church when the 
reformed services were concluded, thereby so incensing the 
crowd that they rushed upon the church, destroying the 
altars and images there, and turning thence they sacked 
the monasteries of the town. This of course provoked 
Romanist anger and reprisals. 

Shortly after this affair at Perth, Knox was called to St. 
Andrew’s to preach and to institute reforms there. The 
archbishop strenuously objected to the intrusion, and de- 
clared he would send a force and have Knox shot if he 
entered the pulpit. As the reformers had but few men on 
the ground and were poorly prepared to withstand such an 
assault they advised Knox to desist for the time from the 
attempt. But he declared himself unafraid and said: ‘‘As 
for fear of danger that may come to me, let no man be 
solicitous, for my life is in the custody of Him whose glory 
I seek. I desire the hand nor weapon of no man to defend 
me. I only crave audience, which, if it be denied me at 
this time, I must seek where I may have it.’’ On the next 
day he preached without interference to a great congrega- 
tion on the driving of the traders and money-changers out 
of the Temple, a subject which yielded itself without 
wresting to forcible application to the circumstances of the 
time. Other sermons followed and as a result the Romish 
worship was abolished, the images and pictures were re- 
moved from the churches, and the monasteries were de- 
stroyed. And this was accomplished, not by the action of 
a mob, but by the orderly exercise of the authority of the 
rulers of the town. Other towns followed the example set 
by St. Andrew’s and the reformed cause advanced apace. 

Simultaneously with the return of Knox to Scotland 


Ped | eAND PAS PORATE 101 


there set in the most critical stage in the whole history of 
the Reformation. The whole issue of the movement hung 
upon the outcome of the struggle in Scotland. ‘The exist- 
ence of the Protestantism of all Europe,’ says Lindsay, 
‘‘“was involved in the struggle in Scotland.’”’ This was par- 
ticularly true of the period embraced within the years 
1559 to 1567. There was a sense then in which it was true 
that the most conspicuous figure on the stage of action for 
the whole movement was John Knox. The British nation 
was in its birth throes. England and Scotland, for a long 
time hereditary foes, were drawing closer together. What 
shall be the immediate issue of their union? —The Romanists 
of England already recognized Mary Queen of Scots as 
their legitimate sovereign. If Mary triumphs in Scotland, 
the new nation is born Romanist. If Knox and the Lords 
of the Congregation, as the organized Protestants had 
come to be called, triumph in Scotland, and if William 
Cecil, stanch Protestant Secretary of State for England, 
guides the national destinies there as he designs, then he 
and Knox, necessary to each other as each understands, 
shall stand sponsors at the institution of a Protestant na- 
tion. How momentous, then, was the issue: ‘‘ Would the 
new nation accept the Reformed religion, or would the re- 
action triumph?’’ On how slender a thread of difference 
do great decisions often hang! For if Scotland can be 
made secure to France and the Roman religion, and the 
Romanist Queen of Scotland make good her claim to the 
English throne, then there accrues such prestige and power 
to Romanism that Protestantism will be crushed, not in 
England and Scotland only, but also in the other countries 
where it had taken hold. 

Into the details of the further process of the struggle it is 
not necessary to go. Suffice it to say that there was more 
or less reluctance felt in the matter of the relief of the 


102 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


Protestants of Scotland by the head of both the State and 
the Church in England. Elizabeth held the memory of the 
“ Blast’’ against Knox, and did not like his appealing to the 
commonalty of his country. She did not like Calvin, and 
had a particular objection to his theology. Archbishop 
Parker at a time of great straits in the struggle wrote to 
Cecil: ‘‘God keep us from such visitations as Knox hath 
attempted in Scotland: the people to be orderers of things.” 
But Cecil had good understanding of what Israel ought to 
do; and he was firmly resolved. He knew “that if the 
Lords of the Congregation failed there was little hope of a 
Protestant England, and that Elizabeth’s crown and Dr. 
Parker’s miter depended on the victory of Knox in Scot- 
land.’ In due time the assistance of money went forward. 
And then an English army crossed the border and com- 
pelled France to release her hold on Scotland. The blood 
spilt by this English army on Scottish soil entered in good- 
ly part to form the cement that fixes still the stability of 
the British nation. The liturgy of the Scottish Church was 
immediately enriched by the following addition: ‘‘And 
seeing that when we by our own power were altogether 
unable to have freed ourselves from the tyranny of stran- 
gers, and from the bondage and thraldom intended against 
us, Thou of thine especial goodness didst move the hearts of 
our neighbors (of whom we deserved no such favor) to 
take upon them the common burden with us, and for our 
deliverance not only to spend the lives of many, but also 
to hazard the estate and tranquillity of their Realm and 
commonwealth: Grant unto us, O Lord, that with such 
reverence we may remember thy benefits received that 
after this in our default we never enter into hostility against 
the Realm and nation of England.” 

The time was propitious and measures were taken by the 
Protestant leaders for intrenching their cause in the ad- 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 103 


vantages already gained and for making more secure the 
interests of the future. There must be prepared a fixed 
form in which the faith of Protestantism might be avowed, 
and provision must be made for the government of the 
Church. The Confession answered one of these ends and 
the Book of Discipline the other. Great attention was 
paid to education, and in the main the interests of the 
movement were ordered with a wisdom above the ordinary. 
The presence of the French on Scotch soil had had the 
effect of consolidating all ranks and classes of the people 
in the conviction that “their only deliverance lay in the 
English alliance and the triumph of the Reformation.” 
Barely a year had elapsed after the return of Knox to Scot- 
land before the Reformed religion had been established by 
the Estates. 

But a complete victory was yet very far from being won. 
The sovereigns had not ratified the Acts of the Estates. 
Mary of Guise, mother of Mary Stuart, had been reigning 
in Scotland as regent. Francis II, the French husband of 
Mary Stuart, shared in the sovereignty. Mary of Guise 
had been suspended from the regency in 1559. Mary and 
Francis had ruled Scotland from France. They, of course, 
had not ratified the Acts which would make Protestantism 
a religion recognized by the statutes of the land. 


JouHn Knox AND MARY STUART 


Francis IT died in 1560, and Mary returned to Scotland 
in the following year. Her coming might well cause alarm 
to the Protestant leaders, to whom her unscrupulous char- 
acter was already too well known. The ultimate decisions 
were now inevitably joined. Her coming at once threw the. 
gains and the prestige of Protestantism into the balances 
to go up or down, to prevail or not to prevail. Brave as he 
was, Knox could but dread her coming. But there he was, 


104 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


and his being there must offset her coming. Then ensued 
the memorable contest, one of the most memorable of 
history, brave on the one side and brilliant on the other, 
between the sturdy Reformer and the fascinating Queen. 
There was hardly ever another such matching of character 
and charm, with such a manifest lack in either contestant 
of what the other had. Mary had none of Knox’s charac- 
ter, and Knox had none of Mary’s charm. Nature had ex- 
hausted all the secret arts of her laboratory to make Mary 
a lovely creature. All about her was beautiful, even to her 
hands, and her voice was sweet and caressing. On the 
other hand grace had gripped the soul of John Knox to 
make him as sturdy as an oak. He alone in Scotland un- 
erringly read Mary’s character when many even of the 
Reforming nobles had been all but persuaded of her sin- 
cerity in professing that she would have some regard to the 
rights and interests of her Protestant subjects. When 
there were some who even thought that by judicious man- 
agement Mary might be won over to the side of the Refor- 
mation, Knox was still undeceived. 

Knox had been accused of rudeness in dealing with Mary, 
whether in the public or the private aspects of the pro- 
longed contest. But it should be remembered, as Lindsay 
has pointed out, that Mary deliberately sought to ply her 
arts against the interest and advantages of Knox, that he 
never asked for an audience at court, but only came when 
he was sent for. Only when he was compelled by the lead 
of Mary herself to speak upon matters that were in ir- 
reconcilable dispute between them did he display that 
sternness which monarchs do not like. He was deferential, 
as a subject should be, when he stood in his character as a 
subject. But when Mary trenched upon that ground on 
which he stood as a prophet of God he could do no other- 
wise than as he did. “‘As Jehovah liveth, before whom I 





PULPIT AND PASTORATE 105 


stand,’’ was an ancient formula of the prophets of which 
Knox could not have been ignorant. His greatest dis- 
tinction was that even in Mary’s entrancing and royal 
presence he could not forget the presence of a higher 
Royalty. “‘What have ye to do with my marriage?” 
Mary demanded of him, “‘or what are you within this com- 
monwealth?” “‘A subject born within the same, madam,”’’ 
coolly answered Knox. “And albeit I neither be Earl, 
Lord, nor Baron within it, yet has God made me (how ab- 
ject that ever I be in your eyes) a profitable member within 
the same.” It was language to which the ears of royalty 
were unaccustomed, and for which royal ethics recognized 
no pardon. ‘“‘Modern democracy came into being in that 
answer.” 

In the end Mary was imprisoned and deposed, and her 
infant son, James VI, was placed on the throne, with 
James Stuart, Earl of Moray, as regent. The Parliament 
completed the work of giving to the Reformed Church 
legal recognition in Scotland. 


THE PROPHET AND THE PREACHER PREDOMINATE 


But no adequate study of the career of John Knox can 
end with regarding him merely as a reformer. Nor is it 
sufficient to say that he was one of the great leaders of the 
Protestant Reformation. First of all, and above all else, 
he was a Christian preacher, an unconquerable prophet of 
God. He was a reformer because he was a preacher, and 
not a preacher because he was a reformer. When the 
preacher is lost in the reformer, both the reformer and the 
preacher suffer. When the reformer is lost in the preacher, 
both the preacher and the reformer gain. This estimation, 
of course, puts preaching at its best, but John Knox is just 
the man who put it at its best. Let any man say what the 
preaching of Luther was, what the preaching of Latimer 


106 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


was, what the preaching of Calvin was, what the preaching 
of Zwingli was, what the preaching of Knox was to the 
Reformation. 

For the greater portion of the time between his return to 
Scotland in 1559 and his death in 1572 Knox was pastor of 
the St. Giles Church in Edinburgh. His stated preaching 
services here consisted in two sermons on Sunday and three 
sermons during the week besides. He did a great deal of 
preaching throughout the kingdom, particularly at a time 
early in his ministry at the St. Giles Church when the city 
had been captured by the forces of the regent and it was 
prudent for Knox to give place temporarily to a less ob- 
noxious man. Opposition thus tended to the wider diffu- 
sion of his ministry. 

Only one complete specimen of his sermons remains in 
printed form, but his letters give some insight into his 
method of preparation. He had not so much a particular 
method of preparation as a fixed habit of study. On this 
habit his preparation was based and through the constant 
application of his diligence as a student to the needs of his 
pulpit his preparation was secured. He describes himself 
as ‘‘sitting at his books”’ and studying the Gospel of Mat- 
thew with the help of “‘some most godly expositions, and 
among the rest Chrysostom.” “This day,” he says again, 
‘“‘ye know to be the day of my study and prayer.’”’ When 
Queen Mary was disposed to upbraid him for not coming 
to her privately when he had occasion to condemn her 
policy, he replied that he could not tell what other men 
should judge of him “that at this time of day am absent 
from my book and waiting upon the court.”’ 

He did not write his sermons in full, but spoke from brief 
notes made on the margin of his Bible. These constitute 
the sole written remains of his pulpit preparation. That he 
thought his subjects through, even to the including to 


PULPIT- AND PASTORATE 107 


some extent of the very words in which they were uttered, 
appears from the fact that he could repeat his sermons al- 
most verbatim for a long time afterwards. He did this on 
one notable occasion when he claimed that the contents of a 
sermon had been misreported to Mary. He went over the 
entire sermon before the Queen and the members of her 
court, and his repetition was pronounced accurate by those 
who had heard the sermon at church. 

His sermons as to their homiletical structure were ex- 
pository. He set himself first of all to give the meaning of 
the passage which he employed for his text according to 
its original intention. He then sought to show its applica- 
tion to the occasion on which it was first employed. Then 
the sermon began: he applied the principles and teachings 
of his text to his hearers and to the times. That he did not 
flinch in the application is one of the plainest facts of his 
preaching. If he saw an evil, whether in great or small, 
whether in the court or out of it, which the principle of his 
text condemned, he allowed his ax to fall at the root of that 
very tree. He did not bother with clearing away the 
underbrush when the monarchs of the forest were decaying. 
When the famous Parliament of 1560, which had to shape 
the political issues in which the Protestant movement was 
involved, was in session, he was lecturing through the 
prophecies of Haggai on the building of the temple. This - 
procedure furnished him indeed ‘‘a doctrine proper for the 
time,’ and gave him an opportunity to adduce as of divine 
authority many of the principles which were pertinent to 
the reorganization of both the Scottish Church and State. 
There is evidence, says Dr. W. M. Taylor, ‘‘that he favored 
as a general thing the practice of continuous exposition, as 
being fraught with profit both to preacher and hearer.” 

He is discoursing of the ‘‘wafer-god,’’ as he conceives the 
Romish idea of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and 


108 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


comparing this process of idol-making with that sarcastical- 
ly described by Isaiah in the ancient time. ‘‘If the mice eat 
the wafer, what becomes of the God? If the mice eat 
the wafer, then what becomes of Christ’s natural body? By 
miracle it flies to heaven again, if the papists teach truly, 
for how soon soever the mouse takes hold, so soon flieth 
Christ away and letteth her gnaw the bread. A bold and 
puissant mouse, but a feeble and miserable god! Yet would 
I ask a question: ‘Whether hath the priest or the mouse 
greater power?’ By his words it is made a god; by her 
teeth it ceaseth to be a god. Let them advise and answer!” 
Very plain he was in this, and in all other matters of doc- 
trine and morals. He “had learned, plainly and boldly, to 
call wickedness by its own terms.’ He has been credited 
with being the originator of the now proverbial saying, 
“Call a fig a fig, a spade a spade.”’ 

Though frail in body, he was vigorous and even vehement 
in delivery. The following description of him in his last 
days by James Melville, who at the time was a student in 
St. Andrew’s, has been preserved: “‘I heard him teach there 
the prophecies of Daniel that summer and the winter fol- 
lowing. I had my pen and my little book, and took away 
such things as I could comprehend. In the opening up of 
his text he was moderate for the space of half an hour; 
but when he entered on application he made me so to shiver 
and tremble that I could not hold my pen to write. He 
was very weak. I saw him every day of his teaching go 
slowly and wearily, with a fur of marten about his neck, a 
staff in the one hand and good, godly Richard Ballantyne, 
his servant, holding up the other armpit, from the abbey 
to the parish kirk, and by the said Robert and another 
servant lifted up the pulpit, where he behooved to lean at 
his first entrance, but before he had done with his sermon 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 109 


he was so active and vigorous that it seemed as if he would 
knock the pulpit in pieces and fly out of it.” 

His pulpit had the happy effect upon him of stimulating 
all his powers and of drawing them to a focus. Here he 
was moved to an intensity which kindled into a flame every- 
thing that it touched. ‘‘It brightened his intellect, enliv- 
ened his imagination, clarified his judgment, inflamed his 
courage, and gave fiery energy to his utterance.” He was 
never elsewhere so great as in his pulpit. His force and 
power were such as literally to set his pulpit in action. 
There are men who possess force, but have little power. 
There are men who have power, but possess little force. 
John Knox had both in a preéminent degree. He had force 
of intellect, of conscience, and of utterance. And in his 
preaching there was realized both by himself and his hearers 
the impress and the direct action of supernatural power. In 
this access of power to his pulpit he was lifted entirely out 
of himself, and he spoke because he could not but speak. 
None could hear him “without being moved either to an- 
tagonism or to agreement.” “Out of the pulpit,” he said 
to Mary in one of their memorable interviews, ‘he be- 
lieved few had occasion to complain of him; but there he 
was not his own master, but was bound to obey Him who 
commanded him to speak plainly, and to flatter no flesh 
on the face of the earth.” 

Such a man was he that he built his character and his 
endeavor as avery corner stone into the life of the Scottish 
nation, and left a permanent and preéminent impress upon 
the Scottish pulpit. “‘His one absorbing aim in life was to 
establish the Reformation in Scotland, and to this purpose 
he brought a disinterestedness, a courage, a hopefulness, a 
diligence, and a faith in God and truth which keep his name 
safe amid the truly great of history.” 


V 


JOHN WESLEY 
(1703-1791) 
WESLEY AND His CENTURY 


Joun WESLEY’s name adorns any page on which it is 
written and dedicates it to edification. His shadow but 
lengthens as the centuries expand. Eighty-eight years of 
the eighteenth century were spanned by his life. But 
this unusual extension of his life along the lines of the 
calendar constitutes one of the least of the reasons why his 
name has been so indelibly associated with the century. 
He wrought his deeds into its quiet annals, gave a new im- 
pulse to its larger affairs, and influenced the far-flung 
future of the English-speaking peoples as did no other man 
of the century, and, indeed, as hardly any other man of 
any other century has ever done. That century, so strange 
in its mixture-of the mean and the mighty, held in its 
galaxy of the great no figure more serene, calmer, more 
courageous, more commanding in his personal influence 
and character than the masterful little man who was only 
five feet and scarcely six inches tall and weighed only one 
hundred and twenty-two pounds. The time, however, was 
not without its other great and notable men. That century 
in England issued to the world a no mean list of illustrious 
names. Great men and great events were astir both at 
home and abroad. Two of the greatest military captains 
of all English history, Marlborough and Wellington, had 
their lives partly cast within the century; and Nelson ap- 
peared ere its close, and Trafalgar was not far off when 
Wesley died. On the very day that Clive won at Plassey 

(110) 


pro Neh s.OR “THE PULPIC 111 


the battle which secured the establishment of the British 
power in India Wesley was on a preaching tour in England 
and records in his Journal that God was with them “‘at 
Sunderland in the evening in an uncommon manner.” 
While Wolfe was struggling up the Heights of Abraham 
and winning Canada from France to the English crown, 
and sealing with his death the great attempt, Wesley was 
on horseback seeking the lost sheep of the English commons 
and winning the begrimed masses of the English mines. 
While Burke was telling the English Parliament that they 
“could never falsify the pedigree”’ of the American people, 
and that an Englishman was “‘the unfittest person on earth 
to argue another Englishman into slavery,’’ Wesley was 
quietly opening a new church at Northwich, whence he 
proceeded, not to London where such mighty events were 
astir, but to Liverpool where his congregations were so 
large and deeply attentive that he did not regret the con- 
trary winds which detained him from an intended journey 
to Ireland. The elder Pitt, the central figure of a brilliant 
epoch of English history, and only five years Wesley’s 
junior, was in that England, too. He had the distinction 
of having it said of him that he was the first Englishman 
who in politics thought outside of England, and embraced 
the continent of Europe and beyond in his imperial mind. 
But Wesley had already said: ‘I look upon all the world as 
_ my parish.” And there, too, upon the contemporary scene 
were Sir Isaac Newton, though he died before Wesley was 
converted, and Edward Gibbon, and Pope, and Byron, 
and Burns, and Goldsmith, and Swift, and Addison, and 
Coleridge, and Wordsworth. Dr. Samuel Johnson was 
there, who, it was said, made the year 1709 ‘‘ ponderous and 
illustrious in English biography by his birth.’ But it fell 
to Wesley’s lot to render the century illustrious by his 
birth. Joseph Butler, taking an easy intellectual prece- 


112 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


dence over the time in which he lived, and made bishop of 
Bristol in the year of Wesley’s conversion, was there, too, 
having the great ‘‘Analogy”’ to his credit; but having it to 
his unforgettable discredit that he forbade Whitefield and 
the Wesleys to preach in his diocese, though “‘all around 
his cathedral city lay the most degraded and hopeless class 
in England—the coal miners of Kingswood, as untouched 
by any of the forces of Christianity as if they had been 
savages in Central Africa.” Nearer to Wesley’s own line 
of action were John Howard, philanthropist of the prisons, 
and William Wilberforce, valiant in the battle for the 
abolition of slavery, to whom Wesley addressed the last 
trembling but courageous letter he ever wrote. ‘That 
century,’ says Winchester in his “Life of John Wesley,”’ 
‘‘was rich in names the world calls great... ; but run over 
the whole brilliant list, and where among them all is the 
man whose motives were so pure, whose life was so unself- 
ish, whose character was so spotless? And where among 
them all is the man whose influence—social, moral, re- 
ligious—was productive of such vast good and of so little 
evil, as that exerted by this plain man who exemplified 
himself, and taught thousands of his fellow men to know, 
what the religion of Jesus Christ really means?”’ 


A WoMAN OF EpworRTH 


There were rich ancestral values lying beyond Susanna 
Annesley, but there is no use in exploring the distant past 
in order to find the most prolifie source of the greatness and 
achievement of John Wesley. Samuel Wesley married 
Susanna Annesley and to them there were born nineteen 
children, of whom John was the fifteenth. Isaac Taylor, 
pronounced by Dr. Alexander Whyte to be ‘‘thus far the 
best writer we have on Wesley,”’ refers thus to the ancestral 
advantages of the Wesleys as they lay on the side of the 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 113 


mother: ‘‘Mind is from the mother. Such we conclude 
to be a law of nature, on the evidence of many bright 
instances. Now, the Wesleys had the advantage of this 
law; and their mother, a woman of quite extraordinary in- 
telligence, force of mind, correct judgment, and vivid 
apprehension of truth, conferred also upon her sons what- 
ever advantage they might derive from her composite ex- 
cellence as a zealous Churchwoman; yet rich in a dowry of 
nonconforming virtues.” 

Mr. Augustine Birrell accounts her to have been a re- 
markable woman, but thinks she was ‘‘cast in a mold not 
much to our mind nowadays.’ But for all his disesteem 
of what he deems to have been severe in her she seems to 
have been fairly well justified of her children. At any rate 
there is not much further to go in explanation of the es- 
sential elements of John Wesley’s character and influence 
when it has been said that Susanna Wesley was his mother. 
Whether with respect to his entering the ministry, or his 
going away to America, or the beginning of lay preaching, 
or his breaking away from Calvinism and his attitude 
toward other questions of theoretical and practical divinity, 
or any other of the graver interests of his life and action, 
she was the ablest and most faithful monitor he ever had. 
To the sturdiness of his father’s character and the real worth 
of the man, notwithstanding some patent defects, he owed 
a not inconsiderable debt. But he was in a conspicuous 
sense his mother’s son. He was born at Epworth, in Lin- 
colnshire, on June 17, 1703. Reckoning by new style it 
would be June 28. He was brought up in a lean and re- 
stricted English rectory, but he took the mean name of 
Epworth and set it as a sign of honor around the earth. 
He first emerges into distinctness out of the large family 
group on the occasion of the fire which destroyed the 


rectory on the night of February 9, 1709, when he was 
3 . 


114 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


scarcely six years of age. The fire was of incendiary origin, 
and was no more anticipated than fires usually are. The 
rector had enemies, but hardly supposed they would go to 
such lengths as this. There was a howling wind from the 
northeast, and none of the family was awakened until the 
flames had crept far up the roof and some sparks fell on 
the bed of one of the girls. Mrs. Wesley was ill, and this 
could but add to the distress and confusion of the occasion. 
When it was thought that all had been gotten safely out the 
cry of a child was heard from the burning building, and little 
John appeared at an upper window. Scarcely could one 
man mount upon the shoulders of another and snatch the 
child from the flames before the roof fell in. This event 
deeply impressed itself upon the mind of John, young as 
he was, and he saw himself ever afterwards as ‘‘a brand 
plucked from the burning.’’ And his ministry, too, took 
from the circumstance a tone of peculiar earnestness. He 
saw men as if perishing in a burning building, and he was 
constrained to make haste to rescue them. His mother 
too now received him as the child of a particular providence, 
and resolved to devote to him more than her usual care. 

Poverty invaded this Epworth household and there were 
many mouths to feel the pinch of it. The good rector lay 
three months in jail for debt, not being much exercised 
thereby, if, indeed, he did not experience a certain relief 
in finding the jail more tolerable than his creditors; and 
Mrs. Wesley was left to wrestle alone with the want that 
hungered her children. She told the Archbishop of York 
that while she had never really wanted bread she had been 
so hard pressed to get it that it was the next degree of 
wretchedness to not having any at all. But out of that 
poverty there came a wealth of trained character which 
many finer houses have coveted in vain. 

Has there ever been such another home school as this 


MULPli> AND: PASTORATE 115 


in the Epworth Rectory with Mrs. Wesley for its master? 
Whatever else may have been lacking among the group 
- composed of the little Wesleys it could not have been will, 
from whichever side of the house the matter might be re- 
garded. Mrs. Wesley must have known this, for the first 
point in her pedagogy was to conquer the will of each child 
and subdue it to her control. When they were still babes 
the children were taught ‘‘to fear the rod and cry softly.”’ 
Fitchett says that, “although the rectory was as full of 
children as a hive is of bees, it was as quiet as a Quaker 
meetinghouse.”’ Eating, drinking, dressing, playing, work- 
ing, and all else they did were regulated by strict rule, and 
instant obedience was required. The children were put to 
school the day they were five years old, and the alphabet 
had to be learned the first day. The next day there was a 
reading lesson from the first verse of the first chapter of 
Genesis. ‘‘Sukey,’’ said the rector, ‘‘I wonder at your 
patience. You have told that child twenty times the same 
thing.”’ ‘Had I not told him the twentieth,” she said, “I 
should have lost the nineteen.’’ Above all she took each 
child apart for an hour each week for intimate prayer and | 
special religious instruction. Long afterwards when John 
was a fellow of Lincoln College he wrote to his mother 
and asked her for the hour she used to give him on Thurs- 
days when he was a boy. And he never ceased to be the 
boy who steadied his mind on her counsels. How could he 
forget the calm wisdom and courage with which she had 
more than once overborne the weakness or rashness of his 
own decisions? What should he do about the serious mat- 
ter of going to America? Her instant and conclusive an- 
swer was: “Had I twenty sons I should rejoice that they 
were all so employed, though I never saw them more.” 
She checked the rashness of his procedure when on hearing 
that Thomas Maxfield, a layman, had in his absence taken 


116 PRINCES OF (QB E +CHR > Hin 


to preaching in the society he hastened to London bent on 
suppressing so impudent an irregularity. “John,” she 
said, ‘‘take care what you do with respect to that young 
man, for he is as surely called by God to preach as you are. 
Examine what have been the fruits of his preaching and 
hear him for yourself.’’ Again, she stood by his side when 
he preached at Kennington Common to twenty thousand 
people and confirmed him in his purpose to forsake if need 
be all the regularities in order to reach the multitudes. At 
last standing beside an open grave in Bunhill Fields, that 
great ‘‘Necropolis of Dissenters,” he said with broken 
voice over her remains: ‘‘I commit the body of my mother 
to the earth.” 


A YOUTH OF OXFORD 


Wesley would hardly be called a scholar in the technical 
sense. How could he have been, or any other man in his 
circumstances? But he was a man of superior scholarly 
tastes and habits, and one of the truest university men 
who ever lived. His training did not cease with the famous 
school in the Epworth rectory. Through the influence of 
the Duke of Buckingham he obtained a scholarship in the 
famous Charterhouse School in London, and thither he 
proceeded when, he was not yet eleven years old. Here he 
thought were laid the foundations of his lasting health from 
the circumstance that he had no meat to eat, it being the 
custom of the school that the larger boys robbed the smaller 
ones of the portion that fell to them. A surer health régime, 
however, must be found in another circumstance—namely, 
that, in obedience to a wise father’s direction, a boyish 
figure was to be seen running three times around the Char- 
terhouse garden every morning. 

From the Charterhouse Wesley passed to Christ Church 
College, Oxford University, and was graduated a Bachelor 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 117 


of Arts four years later at the age of twenty-one. Two years 
later he was elected to a fellowship in Lincoln College, and 
at twenty-four was a Master of Arts. He had the special 
advantage of being appointed Greek lecturer and moderator 
of the classes in which capacity he presided over the class 
disputations, weighed the arguments, and then decided 
with whom the victory lay. ‘I could not avoid,” he said, 
‘acquiring thereby some degree of expertness in arguing, 
and especially in discovering and pointing out well-covered 
and plausible fallacies. I have since found abundant reason 
to praise God for giving me this honest art.”’ 

It was in his Oxford days that there came into his hands 
several still famous books which were destined to play a 
large part in his life. These were 4 Kempis’s ‘‘ Imitation,” 
Taylor’s “‘Holy Living and Holy Dying,” and Law’s 
“Serious Call’’ and ‘‘Christian Perfection.’’ All of them 
influenced him greatly, if not always favorably. Law’s 
two books he later owned sowed the seed of Methodism. 

It was in these Oxford days, too, that the name ‘“‘ Meth- 
odist”’ originated. When John returned from a period of 
two years’ service as his father’s curate, the village of 
Wroote having been attached to Epworth so that an as- 
sistant to the rector was required, he found his brother 
Charles at the head of a few young men who had banded 
themselves together for stricter religious exercises and ob- 
servances than were customary amid the looseness of the 
life of the University at the time. Their very singularity 
was their offense. They constituted the Holy Club so 
famous in early Methodist history. It was supposed that 
the name Methodist first fell as a badge of scorn from the 
lips of a young man of Christ Church, Wesley’s own col- 
lege. The Holy Club, the headship of which John Wesley 
assumed as by natural right, engaged zealously in the 
visitation of the poor, the sick, and prisoners; but its first 


118 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


business was Bible study. These young men opened their 
meetings with prayer, and studied the Greek New Testa- 
ment. Their object was scriptural, spiritual, humanitarian, 
but first of all scriptural that it might be the rest. 

Wesley’s studies did not cease when the gates of the 
University closed behind him. He carried all that was best 
in the University life with him and made even that best 
better. He was a surpassingly diligent student to the end 
of his days. The extent and variety of his reading, and the 
wide*range of his acquaintance with Greek, Latin, and 
English authors, together with his acquisition of a knowl- 
edge of the German and Spanish languages, as revealed in 
his Journal, is truly astonishing. And the work he did 
himself as editor and author is more astonishing still. He 
was the creator and distributor of libraries for his people. 
on all sorts of useful subjects. Walking or riding as he 
went forth intent upon the accomplishment of his great 
task, he read books and mastered knowledge. He could 
travel on foot twenty-five miles a day, reading as he walked. 
‘He turned the saddle,’’ says Fitchett, ‘“‘and the open 
road, and the changing English skies into a permanent 
study.’”’ When he was above sixty he records that he 
traveled one hundred and ten miles in a single day, and that 
he was reading two books on the road. 

He had now finished the University, and had chosen his 
life calling. But he had not found his work. There was a 
great waste period in his life. He had all the natural 
qualifications of a Christian minister, but he failed. He 
went to Georgia, and that was a failure. His discipline 
was too severe for his Georgia parishioners, though he 
never asked other people to carry burdens he would not 
carry himself. When the boys in Delamotte’s school in 
Savannah who wore shoes and stockings affected to despise 
those who came barefooted Wesley went down barefooted 


BOLPEEPAND ‘PASTORATE 119 


and taught the school himself. But he was a High-Church- 
man, and ordinarily his ways were beyond the people. A 
particularly candid person said to him: ‘‘The people say 
they are Protestants, but as for you they cannot tell what 
religion you are of; they never heard of such a religion 
before, and they do not know what to make of it.’” Speak- 
ing of his own High-Church bigotry at this time he later 
exclaimed: “‘How well since I have been beaten with mine 
own staff.”” It has been well said of this period of his life 
that he ‘‘who reads the secret of Wesley’s failure has got 
to the very heart of Christianity.’ He returned to Eng- 
land on the eve of the great crisis of his religious life and 
entered speedily on his great career. 


‘‘AnN EpocH IN ENGLISH HIsToRY’”’ 


Wesley himself vacillated between two opinions as to 
whether or not he was a Christian before the epochal ex- 
perience in Aldersgate Street. He had early had an un- 
designed reproof from the porter of his college at Oxford. 
Late at night they had talked and Wesley had told the 
porter to go home and get another coat. The porter replied 
that he had on the only coat he had in the world, and he 
thanked God for it. ‘‘Go home and get your supper, then,”’ 
said Wesley. The porter had had nothing that day but a 
drink of water, and yet he was thankful to God for that. 
Wesley then said that it was late and he would be locked 
out, and asked what he would then have to thank God for. 
‘That I should have the dry stones to lie upon,’’ replied 
the porter. Finding the porter thus persistent in thanking 
God for everything in his penurious lot Wesley felt sharply 
rebuked and that there was something in religion to which 
he had not attained. 

Again Spangenberg, a Moravian pastor he met in 
Georgia, probed him mercilessly though kindly on the 


120 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 
subject of personal religion. Wesley had sought his advice, 
and Spangenberg said: ‘‘My brother, I must ask you one 
or two questions: Have you the witness within yourself? 
Does the Spirit of God witness with your spirit that you 
are a child of God?”’ Wesley hesitated to answer. Span- 
genberg continued: ‘‘Do you know Jesus Christ?” ‘TI 
know he is the Saviour of the world,’’ said Wesley. ‘True, 
but do you know he has saved you?”’ persisted his inter- 
locutor. ‘‘I hope he has died to save me,’’ was all that 
Wesley could say. ‘‘Do you know yourself?” asked Span- 
genberg again. “I do,’’ Wesley now replied; but after- 
wards, committing the matter to the privacy of his Journal, 
he said reflectively: ‘I fear they were vain words.” 

These episodes are hardly creditable to a man of Wes- 
ley’s intelligence and training if he was already a Christian. 
He is compelled to testify against himself. In short, he is 
not able to bear any of the tests of a vital faith, or a 
conscious Christian experience. The whole case so far as 
Wesley himself is concerned might be made to rest upon 
his own precise and seemingly determinative statement 
explanatory of his spiritual state before the crisis of his 
conversion given in connection with a reference he has made 
to the evangelical truths which had changed his own life 
and through the preaching of which he was now bringing 
so many others to salvation. The statement dates six 
years after his conversion, and runs as follows: ‘‘It was 
many years after I was ordained deacon before I was con- 
vinced of the great truths above recited; during all that 
time I was utterly ignorant of the nature and condition of 
justification. Sometimes I confounded it with sanctifica- 
tion, particularly when I was in Georgia. At other times 
I had some confused notion about the forgiveness of sins; 
but then I took it for granted the time of this must be either 
the hour of death or the day of judgment. I was equally 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 121 
ignorant of the nature of saving faith, apprehending it to 
mean no more than a firm assent to all the propositions con- 
tained in the Old and New Testaments.” He might change 
his own mind from time to time, but this could not alter 
the facts of his experience. The question is not what he 
was by nature, nor by his own attempts at a conscientious 
direction of his life, but what the grace of God did for him. 
Perhaps the deepest test of evangelical Christianity after 
all is what it has to do and what it can do for just such a 
man as John Wesley. Does it not in any complete and 
final estimate of the matter do as much for a John Wesley 
as for a John Bunyan, for a William E. Gladstone as for a 
Billy Bray? Wesley was an educated, refined, moral, up- 
right gentleman, but had the grace of God nothing left 
to do for him? What is it after all but a lingering legalism 
which causes us to hesitate to attribute such a man’s salva- 
tion to God’s grace? 

After searching conversations with Peter Bohler and 
other close contact with the Moravians, together with the 
hearing of the clear testimony to their consciousness of 
salvation which Bohler contrived to have a number of 
them give in his presence, Wesley was led on to seek the 
more assured peace of his own soul. From before its dawn 
the day of his conversion drew on toward a crisis. At five 
o'clock in the morning he opened his Testament at the 
words: ‘‘There are given unto us exceeding great and pre- 
cious promises.”” As he was about to leave the house he 
opened to the words: ‘Thou art not far from the kingdom 
of God.” He attended a service at St. Paul’s in the after- 
noon and heard the bitter cry of his own heart translated 
into the stormy music of an anthem: ‘‘Out of the depths 
have I cried unto thee, O Jehovah!”’ In the evening he 
went, very unwillingly as he says, into a meeting of an 
Anglican Society in Nettleton Court just off Aldersgate 


122 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


Street in London. The leader was reading Luther’s Preface 
to the Epistle to the Romans. What followed can never 
be told so well as in Wesley’s own words: ‘‘ About a quarter 
before nine, while he was describing the change which 
God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my 
heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ 
alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that 
he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from 
the law of sin and death.”” There, says Dr. J. H. Jowett, is 
where the Methodist river was born. This is the conversion 
that renovated a nation and created a Church. Three other 
conversions, and three only, since Pentecost, in their ef- 
fect upon Christian progress, can rank with Wesley’s: 
St. Paul’s, Augustine’s, and Martin Luther’s. To the first 
Christianity in its universality as wrought out to embrace 
the Gentiles was due; to the second much of the force and 
effectiveness of Latin Christianity was due; to the third 
Protestant Christianity was due; to John Wesley Meth- 
odism was due. Two of these in particular, Paul and Lu- 
ther, like Wesley, had wrestled with legalistic conceptions 
of religion and for long had missed the way of grace. Au- 
gustine found a more direct way to grace. But each of the 
others had to find it to break the zmpasse he had reached. 
And in each case it was the principle of salvation by grace 
as over against the method of salvation by works that 
precipitated the crisis. 

The effect of Wesley’s conversion on his own life and 
ministry was immediate and decisive. The date was May 
24, 1738. Lecky says it ‘‘forms an epoch in English his- 
tory.” It was the turning point in Wesley’s career. With 
legalism and ritualism he had done. From that time his 
“‘sacerdotalism withered away.’ There was still discipline, 
but no more of ‘‘the physic of an intolerable discipline.” 
The waste period of his life was at an end. On June 11, 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 123 


1738, eighteen days after his conversion, he preached his 
famous sermon at Oxford University on the text, “‘ By grace 
are ye saved through faith,’’ and sounded forth the keynote 
of that marvelous ministry and prodigious preaching career 
upon which he was now fairly launched. 

Remarkable energies and capacities for religious service 
were released by John Wesley’s conversion. Before that 
he could do nothing. After that he could do all things. 
As a part of his religious equipment he had a profound 
trust in a superintending providence. He has been credited 
by one of his biographers with ‘“‘a genius for administra- 
tion.” Macaulay said he had ‘‘a genius for government.”’ 
Henry Thomas Buckle said he was ‘‘one of the greatest of 
ecclesiastical legislators.’’ But the real secret of his leader- 
ship lies rather outside these suggestions. He led so well 
because he first allowed God to lead him. He did not try 
to elaborate any ecclesiastical system at all. He did his 
work and left the system to develop as need might require. 
He believed that ‘‘Providence legislated the system of 
Methodism.” The class meeting was “not a device, but 
a fortunate suggestion.’ It arose through an arrangement 
for paying a debt on the chapel at Bristol, the first that the 
Methodists ever owned in the warld. When groups had 
been provided with leaders to collect small sums of money 
from them weekly a report was incidentally made to Wes- 
ley that some were walking disorderly. ‘It struck me im- 
mediately,” he said: “‘this is the very thing we have wanted 
so long’’; and the leaders were directed to assume a spir- 
itual oversight toward the members of their group. In the 
same undesigned way lay preaching arose. And the same 
was true of field preaching. Whitefield, being denied. the 
churches, had taken to preaching in the open air at Bristol. 
Having great crowds upon his hands and wishing to leave 
for other parts, he sent for Wesley, who was then in Lon- 


124 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


don. Wesley hesitated, but went. He had once thought 
it all but a crime to save a man outside a church. But the 
scene at Bristol conquered all his reluctance. The next 
day after hearing Whitefield, and seeing the tears stream 
down the miners’ cheeks, leaving white trails after them, he 
himself stood beneath the overarching skies, and outside 
the church and its chancels gave the gospel to the poor. 

As a further part of his religious equipment he had an 
eye single to the essentials and cared for naught else. Those 
who knew him best counted him singularly free from the 
ordinary frailties of human nature, such as pride, ambition, 
or the desire for mere power or personal ease. Ease, time, 
life, all he had devoted to God. He refused no labor; he 
selected none; all work that came to his hands was his. 
‘‘T am as ready,” he said, “‘to embark for America as for 
Ireland. All places are alike tome. I am attached to none 
in particular. Wherever the work of the Lord is to be 
carried on, that is my place for to-day.”’ 


THE RENOVATION OF A NATION 


What Wesley did for England only increases through the 
perspective of the years. On the occasion several years ago 
of the reopening after repairs and enlargement of Wesley’s 
Chapel, City Road, London, renewed attention was at- 
tracted to Wesley’s achievement and to Methodism. Many 
able and appreciative opinions were evoked with respect 
to the man and his work. Notable among them was an 
editorial utterance of The Spectator, London. Copying the 
article into its own columns The Methodist Times said: 
‘‘Greater praise than this has never been uttered, but we 
believe that there is no exaggeration in it whatever.” 
The Spectator thought that England as a whole was ‘‘as 
truly interested in Wesley as in Shakespeare’’; and that 
it might ‘‘well be doubted whether in the long course of 


Berl AND PASTORATE sas. 


her history anyone has ever influenced her life in so direct, 
palpable, and powerful a way as has John Wesley.”’ Others 
had wrought: ‘‘But when all is said and done John Wesley 
remains the one supreme and towering figure, a charac- 
teristic product of England, and one of the noblest and most 
saintly of her sons.’’ His supreme title to fame was “‘that 
he arrested the moral and spiritual decline of England, and 
that he was the chief agent in the renewal of her inward and 
spiritual life.’ From what had Wesley saved England? 
The Spectator continues: ‘‘Though the story has often been 
told, we doubt whether any person who has either no vivid 
imagination or no very intimate acquaintance with the 
history of the time can realize how rotten was the condition 
of England in the middle of the last century. There seemed 
to be scarcely a healthy piece of social tissue. An ag- 
nostic Whiggism had degraded the Church from a spiritual 
organization into a mere political mechanism. . . . The 
hungry sheep looked up and were not fed; half the parishes 
in England were void of spiritual life, many were sunk in 
the lowest vice without restraint or reproof. The governing 
classes were perhaps even feebler and more corrupt than 
in the reign of the second Charles. Sir George Trevelyan 
in his admirable work on the American Revolution has 
shown how England’s failure in her struggle with her col- 
onies was in no small degree due to her immorality and 
corruption; and that was when a distinct movement up- 
ward had begun. What must have been the condition,a 
quarter of a century before? ... It seemed as though Eng- 
lish society were doomed to decadence. Humanly speak- 
ing, we may say that such a decadence would have ensued 
had it not been for the new movement of which Wesley 
was the leading religious and moral expression. ... What the 
mechanical morals of sleepy Anglican rectors could not do 
for England this holy man with his soul aflame with a 


126 PRINCES OF THE CHRISEIARN 


sacred zeal and love accomplished. . . . We owe it largely 
to the Methodist movement that, while the French could 
only renew their outworn structure by violent revolution, 
the English could transform theirs by peaceable means.” 
When a man’s work has borne for a hundred years the 
beating of the tides which sweep evermore out of eternity 
upon the salient shores of time and yet provokes such a 
tribute as this he is perhaps prepared to endure calmly any 
further ravages of time. | 

He won the multitudes of England by the greatness of 
his compassion. The compassion of a great Christian heart 
moved and remade the masses. He was utterly without 
respect of persons, unless indeed like his Master he had a 
genius for finding the poor and neglected. Bishops and 
magistrates might rant, and either slur or incite the rabble 
he gathered to be his hearers; and even Samuel Wesley, 
his older brother, might speak contemptuously of White- 
field’s ‘‘tatterdemalions on the common’’; but none of 
these things moved John Wesley. 

He took a cast-off building, the old Foundry in London, 
and gathered a cast-off people, a people cast-off from re- 
ligion and the Church, and from morals, and decency, and 
good manners, and made of them a people prepared for the 
Lord. Forth from this Foundry, foundry now of human 
character and conduct, and no more of the implements of 
war—forth from this Foundry, as Bishop John P. New- 
man has said, there proceeded the ‘‘seven spirits of modern 
benevolence.” The Foundry, the first settled preach- 
ing place of the Methodists in London, was a Christian 
Church, a Christian school, a Christian home, a house of 
mercy for poor and destitute widows, a dispensary for the 
distribution of medicines to the poor, a book room for pro- 
viding cheap but approved literature, a bank for the savings 
of the thrifty, and for the relief of the temporarily dis- 


Peeri lo AND PASTORATE 127 


tressed. Truly he never forgot a word he received from a 
serious man in hise arlier life, that ‘‘the Bible knows nothing 
of solitary religion.’”’ But the Foundry, ‘in streaming 
London’s central roar,’’ was not yet the full expression of 
his compassion for the poor. Miners, and colliers, and 
weavers, and spinners, and artisans, and laborers in various 
trades formed the bulk of the membership in the societies. 
At Kingswood among the colliers many of the noblest 
scenes of Wesley’s ministry were laid. When the Meth- 
odists had spoken of saving the American Indians, they 
had been challenged to go to Kingswood: ‘‘If you wish to 
convert heathens, go to Kingswood.” Right bravely did 
they accept the challenge. There at the age of eighty-one 
Wesley preached in the open air under the shade of trees 
which he himself had planted, and surrounded by the chil- 
dren of two generations of his own people who had passed 
away. 

Dr. J. H. Jowett used to say that he always read with 
great and tender interest that part of Wesley’s Journal 
where he records his first visit to Newcastle. The wicked- 
ness he finds there exceeds any he has seen elsewhere. 
There was vice, and the wretchedness which accompanies 
it, drunkenness, cursing, swearing even from the mouths of 
little children. He was shocked but not dismayed. This 
was his sublime conclusion: ‘Surely this place is ripe for 
the Master.’’ And when he had preached to them on that 
almost the tenderest of all texts, ‘‘I will heal their back- 
slidings, I will love them freely,’ they came about him, 
plucked him by the garments, and took him by the hand, 
till he was ‘‘almost trodden under foot out of pure love 
and kindness.’’ He started an orphanage at Newcastle, 
and a Quaker sent him one hundred pounds toward its 
needs. This man said that in a dream he had seen Wesley 


128 PRINCES. OF THE-CHRIS#ias 


surrounded by so large a flock of sheep that he could not 
shelter them and he wanted to help him. 

He first gave himself to the people, and then gave them 
all he had. He was a man of a prodigal philanthropy. 
None ever cared less for money on his own account or knew 
better how to use it for the advantage of others. At 
Oxford when his income was thirty pounds he lived on 
twenty-eight, and gave away the rest. And still as his 
income was doubled and trebled he lived on the twenty- 
eight pounds and gave away the rest. 

But the sovereign expression of Wesley’s philanthropy 
was in his passion for souls. He cared so little for money 
because he cared so much for men. The crown of all his 
work was that the poor had the gospel again preached to 
them. This was what lifted England. This was what 
made Methodism. He revived what Bishop Lightfoot has 
called ‘‘that lost secret of Christianity, the compulsion of 
human souls.”’ He was set apart, as Farrar says, ‘“‘by the 
hands of an invisible consecration, to the task which even 
an archangel might have envied him of awakening a mighty 
revival of religious life’’ in pulpits that were dead, and in a 
slumbering Church, and in a corrupt society. 

He had a penchant for the poor. But he was not a par- 
tisan of the poor. He had access to the best life of the 
nation, intellectually, politically, socially. He conducted 
himself with a tireless patience toward the ecclesiastical 
authorities, and other forms of opposition to himself and 
his work. One of his high and conspicuous virtues was “‘a 
sovereign religious tolerance.”’ He desired ‘‘a league of- 
fensive and defensive with every soldier of Jesus Christ.”’ 
“Then think, and let think,’’ he remonstrated with the 
Bishop of Lincoln when he found in him a most unworthy 
narrowness of view. 

He knew England better than any other man in it, and 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 129 


his interest in men was as wide as his knowledge of their 
condition. As Winchester says: ‘‘He examines a society 
of colliers in some grimy little Yorkshire village on the 
state of their souls, and then he goes to his room and writes 
a letter to Lord Dartmouth or Lord North on the state of 
the nation.”’ Riding one day he overtook a stranger who 
persisted in an effort to draw him into an argument on the 
decrees involved in the Calvinistic belief of the time. 
Waxing wrathful in debate the man at length said: ‘‘ You 
are rotten at heart; and I take you for one of John Wesley’s 
followers.”’ ‘‘No,’’ was the calm reply, ‘‘I am John Wesley 
himself.’’ And then there was a rare trial of the legs of two 
horses. ‘‘He would gladly have run away outright,’’ says 
Wesley, ‘‘but being the better mounted of the two I kept 
close to his side, and endeavored to show him his heart 
until we came into the streets of Northampton.” The in- 
cident is a fine application of the advice of Archbishop 
Potter offered to Wesley early in his career: ‘‘If you desire 
to be extensively useful, do not spend your time and 
strength in contending for or against such things as areofa 
disputable nature, but in testifying against open and 
notorious vice, and in promoting real spiritual holiness.”’ 


THE CREATION OF A CHURCH 


Wesley lived and died a member and a minister of the 
Church of England. For a long time he kept his people as 
close as might be to its services and ordinances. He did 
not design a separate movement nor the creation of a 
Church. Had he so designed, doubtless the end could never 
have been so well accomplished. Speaking of the consum- 
mate work of the evangelists achieved in the writing of 
the Gospels, Dr. A. M. Fairbairn says they ‘‘did not know 
how great a thing they were doing: if they had known, they 
could not have done it, for that would have meant that they 

9 


eee 


130 PRINCES: OF THE |CHRIS@iams 


conceived themselves as working, with the whole world 
looking on, at a model for all men to copy. If an author at- 
tempted to compose a history with a vision of all the ages 
standing at his elbow and reading his words, he would lose 
the serene eye which reflects the truth and would see 
double.’”’ So Wesley did not signal the world to see him 
build a Church. He labored on with a prodigious power of 
endurance, displaying under every trial, and despite all 
constraint, an indefatigable courage, and preaching with 
an unexampled effectiveness; but with an eye single to 
the immediate task. The end was inevitable as affairs 
stood in the Church of England at the time. But Provi- 
dence designed the separation, and not Wesley. 

Out of the spiritual loins of this man was to issue a 
progeny like to that of Abraham in numbers; and never- 
failing, never-tiring was his labor toward an end which 
mortal mind could scarcely have designed. He had a 
phenomenal capacity for work, and in his work he was 
methodical almost to a fault. If his people are to be like 
him, they could not have a better name than Methodists. 
‘‘Leisure and I,” he wrote his mother from Oxford, ‘‘have 
parted company.”’ It was a perpetual dissolution. ‘‘They 
never met again.’’ When he was fairly fixed in his course, 
no danger, and hardly any disaster, could swerve him in 
the least. Though always in haste, he made the fine dis- 
tinction that he never permitted himself to be in a hurry. 
Dr. Samuel Johnson was very fond of his society. Said 
he to Boswell: “John Wesley’s conversation is good, but 
he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a 
certain hour.’ That the old Doctor himself was never 
obliged to do. Speaking still more strongly at another 
time, he said: “I hate to meet John Wesley. The dog en- 
chants you with his conversation, and then breaks away to 
go and visit some old woman,” 


PUEPIU AND PASTORATE 131 


He had a tough little body that could endure like leather. 
Fitchett says that he was ‘‘as insensible to vicissitudes of 
weather as a North Sea pilot.”” He preached his first open- 
air sermon just outside the city of Bristol on April 2, 1739, 
and his last at Winchelsea on October 7, 1790. Here lie 
fifty-one years “filled with a strain of toil almost without 
parallel in human experience.’”’ He came to Bristol when 
he had reached eighty-five years to keep a preaching en- 
gagement six miles out, and when offered a horse and 
urged to ride he replied: ‘‘I am ashamed that any Meth- 
odist preacher in tolerable health should make a difficulty 
of this’’; and he was off at once on foot. When he was still 
a year older he finds that he cannot write more than fifteen 
hours a day without injury to his eyes. In May, 1742, at 
the invitation of John Nelson, the most noted of his early 
lay preachers, Wesley went to the North of England and 
visited Newcastle. This visit was the beginning of his 
itinerant career. There is no following him after this. In 
the last fifty years of his life, which spanned the itinerant 
period, he traveled more than 250,000 miles, and preached 
over 40,000 sermons. He crossed the Irish Channel often 
enough to have carried him ten times around the globe, and 
visited remote mining towns and fishing villages which yet 
lie off the common ways of travel. From Newcastle-upon- 
Tyne to Gwennap Pit in Cornwall, where 10,000 people 
came to his early morning preaching, all England echoed 
to the tramp of his horse’s feet and wakened its ear to the 
constraint of his mighty voice. Between the two Octobers 
of his Journal, says Birrell, “‘there lies the most amazing 
record of human exertion ever penned or endured.’”’ When 
he was beyond seventy 30,000 people gathered at a time 
to hear him in Gwennap Pit. In his Journal he writes: 
‘“T have entered the eighty-third year of my age. Tama 
wonder to myself. I am never tired, either with preaching, 


132 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


writing, or traveling.’ Mr. John Morley counts Glad- 
stone’s speech at Gravesend in 1871 when he spoke for two 
hours to an audience of 20,000 as both physically and in- 
tellectually the greatest achievement of Gladstone’s career. 
But aside from the intellectual greatness of Gladstone’s ef- 
fort such a performance would hardly count in Wesley’s 
career. 

But it was not endurance alone which was needed in 
Wesley, for without his masterful courage endurance itself 
would have failed. Amid all the tumult into which he was 
repeatedly cast he was steadfast, immovable, serene, the 
one ‘‘unshakable soul who never doubted, never faltered, 
never grew discouraged.”’” He was “censured by bishops, 
cursed by High-Church clergy, and slandered by a host of 
pamphleteers,’”’ but no storm shook his soul. His ex- 
perience with mobs is one of the strangest chapters in 
English Church history. The Methodists were not in 
favor with magistrates and ministers. Squires and parsons 
sometimes led the mobs, and oftener incited them to their 
wild and violent actions. In justice to the masses among 
whom for the most part Wesley did his work this fact de- 
serves to be remembered. 

But he was a master of assemblies even among these 
turbulent masses. His rule, confirmed as he says by ex- 
perience, was ‘‘always to look a mob in the face.”’ It would 
almost seem that his firm and piercing and clear-glancing 
hazel eye had been made for that very purpose. Anyway 
these two good eyes glancing undaunted into the face of 
the mob served him a better purpose than guns or swords 
could have done, and were more effective than the some- 
times reluctant interference of a magistrate in his behalf. 
‘“‘At Newcastle,” he says, ‘‘there was a great mob. I spent 
an hour in taming them, and then exhorted them for two 
hours more.” He records after the Wednesbury riots, the - 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 133 


fiercest he ever encountered, where he was pulled about and 
assaulted for hours, and brought in repeated danger of his 
life, that he was as calm through it all as if he had been at 
home in his study. 

Out of the mob strange defenders sometimes arose. In 
a rowdy London meeting a big Thames waterman squared 
his brawny front to the crowd, and said with an emphasis 
which compelled assent: ‘‘That gentleman says nothing 
but what is good. I say so; and there is not a man here 
shall say otherwise.’”? The captain of that same Wednes- 
bury riot, a burly prize fighter from the beer garden, sud- 
denly turned about, faced his own crowd, and said to 
Wesley: “Sir, I will spend my life for you. Follow me, 
and not a soul here shall touch a hair of your head.” And 
thus in these strange ways One who had counted the hairs 
of that noble gray head conveyed him safely away. 

But it was not the mob alone which called out his courage. 
Coming once to Hayle on the way to preach at St. Ives he 
encountered great difficulty in making the journey. “The 
sands between the towns,”’ says Cadman in his ‘‘ Three Re- 
ligious Leaders of Oxford,’”’ ‘“‘were covered with a rising 
tide, and a sea captain begged the old hero to wait until 
it had receded. But he had to be at St. Ives by a given 
time, and he called to his coachman, ‘Take the sea! Take 
the sea!’ At first the horses waded; ere long they were 
swimming, and the man on the box feared that all would 
be drowned. Wesley put his head out of the carriage to 
encourage him. ‘What is your name, driver?’ he inquired. 
‘Peter, sir,’ was the reply. ‘Peter, fear not; thou shalt not 
sink,’ exclaimed the patriarch. When they reached St. 
Ives, after attending to Peter’s comfort, he went into the 
pulpit, drenched as he was, and preached. The philosophi- 
cal coolness and brevity with which he recorded these and 
similar adventures show that he regarded them as merely 


134 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


incidental to that cause he had assigned as the sole purpose 
of his existence, and to which he had consecrated all his 
gifts.” 

What though these be the gifts and qualities with which 
he was so highly endowed, and though this be the measure 
of the zeal with which he employed them, still he could not 
have come to his goal except he had possessed extraordinary 
power as a preacher. His possession of such exceptional 
power cannot be easily disputed; though the full expression 
of it does not appear in his printed sermons. When does 
it ever so appear? Much of the power and effect of the 
preaching of Phillips Brooks, Alexander McLaren, R. W. 
Dale, H. P. Liddon, J. B. Mozley, C. H. Spurgeon, and 
H. S. Holland appears in their printed sermons. But 
even in these instances to read the sermon is not to hear the 
man. Every preacher who is great in his pulpit utterance 
has some secret which is not readily committed to paper. 
Wesley’s printed sermons are not by any means without 
value. They are biblical and religious, logical, are expressed 
with unusual clearness, and they search the conscience. At 
least one Methodist preacher remembers well this last ef- 
fect upon himself as he read them when going through his 
Conference Course of Study. Bishop Watts-Dichfield, of 
the Church of England, has recently stated that every year 
he goes back to the sermons of Wesley and Spurgeon, for, 
says he, wherever either one of them begins he always ends 
by telling a man how to be saved. And perhaps there are 
still a good many who need to be told this very thing. 

Natural gifts never fully explain great preaching. White- 
field’s lips were more eloquent, and his heart more emotion- 
al; but Wesley was the greater preacher. It was not merely 
that he made the fields his auditorium and the skies his 
sounding board. ‘‘As a field preacher,’’ says Taylor, ‘‘the 
courage, the self-possession, the temper, the tact which 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 135 


John Wesley displayed place him in a very high position. 
When encountering the ruffianism of mobs and magistrates, 
he showed a firmness, as well as a guileless skill, combined 
with the dignity and courtesy of a gentleman.’ These 
are great aids to preaching, and all preachers might covet 
their possession. But they do not suffice. When John 
Wesley preached, the luster of eternity itself shone upon 
English hill and moor, and the solemn dread of God and 
his will, and yet the sweet assurance of his mercy bowed 
the hearts of the multitude in awe. The hearts of men 
were melted under his preaching as by the demonstrable 
power of the Spirit of God. John Nelson had first heard 
Whitefield, but this had not prepared him for Wesley. 
““My heart,’ he says, ‘‘beat like the pendulum of a clock; 
I thought he spoke to no one but me. This man can tell 
the secrets of my heart; but he hath not left me there, for 
he hath shown me the remedy, even the blood of Jesus.” 
It is estimated that he preached five hundred sermons in 
the last nine months of the year 1739, and only five of them 
in churches. Five years later he was turned away from 
Oxford after preaching in St. Mary’s. Strange to say 
here was one of the plainest proofs of his power. The 
spiritual religion he preached was resisted in these circles. 
He was denied the churches and turned to the open fields. 
He found no more place among the heads of colleges, and 
turned to the humbler people, who gladly crowded his 
societies. He was even denied the church at Epworth, 
and so taking his stand upon his father’s tombstone he 
preached in the churchyard to the largest congregation 
ever seen in the place. These services were continued for 
several days, and were attended with amazing spiritual 
power, the cries of penitents often interrupting the voice 
of the preacher. One evening a gentleman of the vicinity 
who had not been inside a church for thirty years alighted 


136 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


from his carriage and stood on the edge of the crowd listen- 
ing, motionless as a statue. Wesley approached and asked 
him, “Sir, are you a sinner?” “Sinner enough,” replied 
the man in a broken voice, and stood, still staring upward 
until his wife and servants came and led him away. 
Ten years later Wesley met him again, a happy old man 
awaiting his release. 

Wesley was wise, too, in the substance and ordering of 
his preaching. He preserved in his own preaching the 
balance of a splendid sanity which often must have been 
sorely tested, and yet kept close to the evangelical essen- 
tials. A still more difficult task was to hold his untrained 
helpers to sanity and sense, and yet to preserve in them the 
savor of a vigorous evangelism. But in this also he was 
eminently successful, proving himself to be an admirable 
and a fatherly guide and governor of his helpers in their 
untried endeavors. As a principal guide to his sanity in 
the conduct of such enormous and delicate affairs he had 
at his hands the Holy Scriptures which he knew so well and 
on which he relied so firmly. ‘‘Intentionally or not,” says 
Bishop Handley Moule, “‘his directions follow the lines of 
the Epistle to the Romans.”’ Wesley’s preaching, together 
with his wisdom in the ordering of the great affairs which 
were providentially committed to his hands, was as fit 
for the ends to be accomplished as the Church has rarely 
seen. “‘By no preconcerted scheme,’ says Dr. Cadman, 
‘“‘nor under the impulse of the moment, but calmly, de- 
liberately, and with the love that endures to the end, Wes- 
ley became the most devoted, laborious, and successful 
evangelist the Christian Church has known since apostolic 
days.” 

Step by step Methodism moved toward consolidation 
into a separate Church. His movement, masterful as his 
management was, outgrew Wesley’s hands, as indeed such 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 137 


a movement outgrows the hands of any man. The lay 
preaching, the organization of classes, the field-preaching, 
the break with Calvinism, the building of separate houses, 
the administration of the sacraments apart from the Church 
of England services, the fixing of the Poll Deed for the safe 
holding of the houses, above all the ordination of Coke, 
Whatcoat, and Vasey for the work in America—all these 
but drew the movement out into greater distinctness, and 
were stones in the foundation of a new and separate Church. 

Wesley till the end maintained a deep and tender con- 
cern for his people, and particularly for their unity and 
spiritual prosperity. In his last letter to the Methodists in 
America he wrote: ‘‘ Lose no opportunity of declaring to all 
men that the Methodists are one people in all the world, 
and that it is their full determination so to continue.” 
At the first Conference after his death Joseph Brad- 
ford produced a letter written in 1785 in which he en- 
joined them that no spirit of a false or injurious in- 
equality should ever exist among them. Here he had the 
preachers especially in mind. For some who were not 
named among the hundred who were to give validity to 
the Deed of Declaration, or Poll Deed, had feared that 
those who were so named might after Wesley’s death take 
occasion of this advantage to oppress them. ‘‘I beseech 
you,” he says, ‘“‘by the mercies of God, that you never 
avail yourselves of the Deed of Declaration to assume any 
superiority over your brethren, but let all things go on 
among those itinerants who choose to remain together 
exactly in the same manner as when I was with you, so 
far as circumstances will permit. In particular, I beseech 
you, if ever you loved me, and if you now love God and 
your brethren, to have no respect for persons in stationing 
the preachers, in choosing children for the Kingswood 
School, in disposing of the yearly contribution and the 


138 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


preachers’ fund, or any other public money. But do all 
things with a single eye, as I have done from the beginning. 
Go on thus, doing all things without prejudice or partiality, 
and God will be with you even to the end.” 


“WHEN THAT WuicH DREW FROM OUT THE BOUNDLESS 
DEEP TurRNS AGAIN HOME” 


On Wednesday evening, February 23, 1791, Wesley 
preached his last sermon in a magistrate’s house at Leather- 
head. The next day he wrote his famous letter to Wilber- 
force on slavery, and sent his busy pen before him to its 
last rest. On Wednesday morning, March 2, 1791, he died 
in triumph in his house in City Road, London, bequeathing 
a last benediction to the latest generation of the multitudes 
of Methodists around the world: ‘‘The best of all is, God is 
with us.’’ His body lay in state in City Road Chapel, 
and ten thousand people came through in a day to look for 
the last time upon his face. In order to avoid a vast crowd 
and a crush at the funeral he was buried in the early morn- 
ing of Wednesday, March 9. 

Of all the briefer tributes to Wesley, that of Charles H. 
Spurgeon, though he lived long afterwards, is the most com- 
manding and the most eloquent. Said he: ‘‘When John 
Wesley died he left behind him four silver teaspoons, a 
teapot, and the Methodist Church.”’ Some of his furniture 
is still on exhibition in the City Road Chapel; but Spurgeon 
did not much underestimate the material content of his 
last will and testament. But he left more than the Meth- 
odist Church. ‘The Methodists themselves,’ says John 
Richard Green in his ‘History of the English People,” 
‘‘were the least result of the Methodist revival.’’ ‘‘Wes- 
ley’s true monument,” says Fitchett, ‘is the England of 
the twentieth century, and the whole changed temper of 
the modern world.” ‘‘He not only founded the Wesleyan 


PUGET AND PASTORATE 139 


community,” says Farrar, ‘“‘but, working through the heart 
of the very Church which had despised him, he flashed fire 
into her whitening embers’”’ and redeemed her altars from 
decay. ‘“‘It is no exaggeration,” Lecky has declared, “‘to 
say that Wesley has had a wider constructive influence in 
the sphere of practical religion than any other man who has 
appeared since the sixteenth century.” 

Wesley was buried in the grounds of the City Road Chap- 
el, London, and his sepulcher has become a shrine. Dean 
Stanley once came there, wishing for a closer contact with 
the departed than he found in the memorial tablet which 
his good offices procured to the Wesleys in the Great Abbey. 
He asked the old man who kept the grounds, asked as if 
by the constraint of the custom of his own Church, by whom 
the cemetery was consecrated. The old man’s brave and 
quiet and sufficient answer was: ‘‘It was consecrated by the 
bones of that holy man, that holy servant of God, John 
Wesley.” 

This is a part of the human side of the story of how a 
great Christian movement arose in the earth and outgrew 
the hands of the man who started it and issued in the 
creation of a great branch of the Christian Church. What 
a power for God and humanity was bound up in that in- 
vincible little body, in that alert mind, in that eager heart! 


‘‘Let not that image fade 
Ever, O God, from out the minds of men, 
Of him thy messenger and stainless priest, 
In a brute, sodden, and unfaithful time, 
Early and late, o’er land and sea, on-driven; 
In youth, in eager manhood, age extreme— 
Driven on forever back and forth the world, 
By that divine, omnipotent desire— 
The hunger and the passion for men’s souls. 
...oend us again, O Spirit of all truth! 
High messengers of dauntless faith and power 
Like him whose memory this day we praise.... 





140 | PRINCES OF THE PULPIT 


Let kindle, as before, from his bright torch, 
Myriads of messengers aflame with thee 
To darkest places bearing light divine: 

... So shall the world, 
That ever surely climbs to thy desire, 
Grow swifter to thy purpose and intent.” 


V if 
HORACE BUSHNELL 
(1802-1876) 
ANCESTRAL AND ACADEMIC ADVANTAGE 


His mother, Bushnell said in a late autobiographic frag- 
ment, deeply as she loved him and tenderly as she cared 
for him, had vanished long years ago; but God stayed by 
him still. No violence would be done to any of the im- 
portant facts or considerable circumstances of his life if 
this reflection were taken as a biographic clue. What God 
and his mother were to him accounted above all the other 
influences which shaped his life for what he was and what 
he accomplished. In a multitude of instances this will of 
course be true, but not always so recognizably true as in 
the case of Horace Bushnell. His devotion to his mother 
never wavered, and his trust in God never faltered. 

He was the oldest of six children, and was born at Litch- 
field, Conn., on April 14, 1802. His early lot was cast 
among a thrifty and an enterprising people in one of the 
most pleasant and attractive parts of New England. The 
removal of the family in his childhood to New Preston, 
about fourteen miles away, did not alter either of these 
circumstances. The surroundings of the homestead were 
still most picturesque and attractive. Nature seems almost 
to have been aware of the presence of the young mind 
which drew so eagerly upon the depths of her calm and 
majesty, and elicited the action of her sublimity upon 
itself, 

(141) 


142 PRINCES OF “THE CHRIS Tis 


‘‘Nor less I deem that there are Powers 
Which of themselves our minds impress; 
That we can feed this mind of ours 
In a wise passiveness. 


Think you, ’mid all this mighty sum 
Of things forever speaking, 

That nothing of itself will come, 
But we must still be seeking:”’ 


His deepest impressions Dr. Munger thinks did not come 
from contact with men nor from books, but from nature; 
wherein there lies the record of a circumstance which did 
not fail in its effect upon the tender and responsive sus- 
ceptibilities of the boy who was destined at length to move 
in spheres so much wider than the circuit of the Con- 
necticut hills. Unconsciously his mind and imagination 
were in training for the sweep of those wider distances 
which were not yet present to either his eye or ear. 

His description of his paternal grandmother, written at 
the request of friends in his old age, is in Bushnell’s best 
form. And it has points of interest beyond the limits of 
the Bushnell family. ‘‘Her height was less than five feet,” 
he says. ‘‘Her form was slight and perfectly erect. Her 
step was elastic, as if she had something to do and was 
doing it. Her sharp black eye seemed to smite intelligence 
into people and almost into things about her. She was a 
very decided Methodist in her religion, yet given more to 
ways of sound perception than to rhapsodies and frames of 
experience. She had been a member for many years of the 
Calvinistic Church at South Canaan, but had been so dread- 
fully swamped in getting her experience through the five- 
point subtleties that she nearly went distracted. But a 
Methodist preacher happened to come that way, and she 
went to hear him. His word brought light. She came out 
of all her troubles into a large place, where the joy of the 


Buell eAND PASTORATE 143 


Lord lifted her burdens and took away the horror under 
which she lay. Henceforth she could only be a Methodist; 
and she went out in the emigration carrying a large stock 
of Methodist books with her to do what she could in laying 
foundations. As yet there was no public worship in the 
settlement. But as soon as the new log house was ready, 
she undertook to make it a place for Sunday worship. She 
put it on her husband, a very modest, plain man, to offer 
prayer. And she selected a young man about twenty years 
of age, whose family she knew in Connecticut, to read the 
sermon. She had no thought of his being a Christian, and 
he had as little of being such himself. She only knew him 
as a jovial, hearty youth, with enough of the constitutional 
fervors in him, as she thought, to make a good reader, and 
that determined her choice. He read well, and continually 
better, as he had more experience, till finally her prayers 
began to find large expectation in him. 

‘Advancing in this manner, she by and by selected a 
sermon in which she hoped he might preach to himself. He 
read with a fervor and unction which showed that he was 
fulfilling her hope. When the little assembly broke up, 
she accosted him, asking him to remain a few minutes after 
they were gone. Then she said to him, having him by 
himself, ‘Do you know, my dear young friend, that you 
have God’s call upon you to be a Methodist preacher?’ 
‘No,’ he answered promptly, ‘I am not even a Christian; 
how ean I be called to be a preacher?’ ‘No matter for 
that,’ she replied, ‘you are called both to be a Christian 
and a preacher; and one for the sake of the other, even as 
Paul himself was! I think I say this by direction. And 
now let me request of you, on your way home, to go aside 
from the path into some quiet place in the woods, where 
you will not be interrupted, and there let this matter be 
settled before God, as he will help you.’” The subject of 


144 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


this wise and effective constraint was none other than 
Elijah Hedding, afterwards a talented and distinguished 
bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

On being asked by a friend in his later life when he first 
became conscious of his own powers Bushnell’s reply was: 
“In a little old schoolhouse that stood in your pasture 
lot, when I was sitting on a slab with legs in it so long that 
my feet did not touch the floor, then I first got the idea that 
I was a power.”’ The slab on which he sat when this im- 
pression came to him was a part of the rude furniture of 
his first schoolroom, and his age was about five years. Ina 
later school he appeared defensively in a pugilistic rdle. 
His good nature was mistaken for weakness and subjected 
him to a good deal of ill treatment. When forbearance 
ceased to be a virtue he challenged one of the roughest and 
meanest of his oppressors, a boy much above his own size, 
and gave him a sound thrashing. There were no further 
mistakes about his good nature. He passed on from school 
to school, having had in the process fine training in public 
speech through the exercises of a debating society of which 
he became a very active member when only a boy. 

He was educated to hard work. And he had the dupli- 
cate advantage of being educated by hard work. Mrs. 
Cheney, his daughter, in her ‘Life and Letters of Horace 
Bushnell,’’ says that he did the full work of a man for at 
least five years before he came to the age of a man, being 
engaged at his tasks oftentimes from thirteen to fourteen 
hours a day. His father was a farmer and also a manu- 
facturer on a small scale, his product in the latter capacity 
having been cloth goods. Horace Bushnell spent the first 
twenty-one years of his life on the farm and in the factory. 
He had his winters in school, but the school was rather an 
interval from work than the work an interval from school. 
At fourteen he began in the mill, working there in the 


EULCEIT “AND PASTORATE 145 


summer, and having at the same time turns upon the farm, 
plowing or harvesting as the season required. He thus had 
opportunity for education in the realism of nature as well 
as in those more poetic and philosophical aspects in which 
he came so to delight. His father was a Methodist, but it 
is evident that Horace, though he was to be a preacher, 
received more benefit from the discipline of his father’s 
farm and factory than from the tenets of his religion. 

The elder Bushnell was also an administrator of the law 
in the minor form of a justice of the peace. When he had 
heard cases on the bench he would go over them with 
Horace and ask his advice upon the final decision of them. 
It was perhaps in this way that the younger man acquired 
that taste for the law which afterwards inclined him to 
enter that profession. 

The mother of this brood of Bushnells was a homekeeper 
and an Episcopalian. Horace received much from her in 
religious ways and otherwise, but nothing from her de- 
nominational connections. Both the father and the 
mother on their removal to New Preston became members 
of the Congregational Church. This change came at a 
time early enough to lead the children in the same direction. 
His younger brother, Dr. George Bushnell, who was him- 
self a minister, referring to the home training with special 
regard to its effect upon Horace, said: “If ever there was a 
child of Christian nurture, he was one; nurtured, I will not 
say, in the formulas of theology as sternly as some; for 
though he had to learn the Westminster Catechism, its 
formulas were not held as of equal or superior authority 
to that of the Scriptures; not nurtured in what might be 
called the emotional elements of religion as fervently as 
some, but nurtured in the facts and principles of the Chris- 
tian faith in their bearing upon the life and character; and 


if ever a man was true to the fundamental principles and 
10 


146 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


the customs which prevailed in his early home, even to his 
latest years, he was.’’ His school life itself had its springs 
in the home through the earnest and intelligent attention 
of the mother to the interests and work of the school. In 
the account he gave of the dealings of his mother with him, 
and the influence of her character upon him, he has written 
one of the most intimate and revealing chapters of his life. 
Concluding the great tribute, he says: “‘And in all these 
points—my education; my exchange, without upbraiding, 
of the ministry for the law; my return to New Haven, 
which was to be my exchange from the law to the ministry, 
especially the two occasions last named—I acknowledge 
my sole indebtedness, not so much to my mother simply, 
as to the very remarkable something hidden in her charac- 
ter. Other women are motherly enough, tender, self- 
sacrificing, faithful; but what I owe to her I owe to her 
wonderful insight and discretion. By pushing with too 
much argument; by words of upbraiding and blame; by a 
teasing, over-affected manner; or by requiring me to stand 
to my engagements, she could have easily thrown me out 
of range and kept me back from self-recovery—nay, she 
might have thrown me quite off the hinge of good nature, 
and so far have battered the conceit of home as to leave it 
no longer a bond of virtue. But she went to her mark 
instead, sure and still as the heavens, and said just nothing, 
save when it was given her. Such wisdom, as I look upon 
it, marks a truly great character; and it is a character not 
common, whether to men or women’ I have only to add 
that she lived long enough to see some pleasant fruits of 
her life and to hope for more.’ 


WRESTED FROM THE MINISTRY TO THE LAW 


When Bushnell was nineteen years of age he united with 
the Church. He felt that God in his tender mercy had led 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 147 


him to Jesus, but there had been as yet no settling of his 
life and conduct upon the basis of a definite and fixed re- 
ligious conviction. Nevertheless he was now sufficiently 
established in his course to wish for the college education 
which earlier he had felt he could not accept out of the 
limited resources of the family exchequer. Further prepa- 
ration was made in private ways for college entrance and 
he was admitted to Yale in 1823. No particular distinction 
seems to have attached to his career in college; though 
Munger says that ‘“‘his college life was marked by intel- 
lectual earnestness, and ‘a wonderful consciousness of 
power.’’’ He was graduated in regular course in 1827. 

On quitting college he began to teach school, but was 
shortly offered an editorial position on the staff of the 
Journal of Commerce in New York. The genesis of this 
engagement was the impression made by his address on his 
graduation from Yale. He remained with the paper for 
ten months, but found it ‘‘a terrible life,’ and was con- 
strained to return to New Haven, where he spent six months 
in the law school. His intention was to settle in some West- 
ern city and make his way into the practice of law. But 
the even flow of his own purpose was to suffer a decisive 
interruption. His mother had made a prenatal dedication 
of him to the Christian ministry. He had so far yielded 
himself to her desire as to feel on his own account that he 
ought to enter the ministry, though he hardly could have 
known all that had passed in her heart. She had studiously 
thrown her will for him upon the practice of a wise reti- 
cence. But he knew well enough what her expectation 
was, and he had given it support. One of the crises of his 
life was upon him. There were hindrances in his way and 
reasons why he was reluctant to take up at all the work of 
the ministry. Indeed, in his particular circumstances 
there seemed to be insurmountable obstacles to his doing 


148 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


so. He had his own plans and ambitions, and these were 
not to be easily laid aside. The ministry did not seem to 
him to offer a congenial sphere for the exercise of his gifts. 
There was in him a deep temperamental disinclination to 
the appeal which the ministry made. In truth, he was in 
such a state of unsettlement with respect to his own re- 
ligious experience that he could make no proper approach 
to the questions involved in his entering the ministry. He 
failed to understand the true position and place of the 
Church in society, and as a consequence misapprehended 
the position of the minister himself. All this he saw clearly 
enough when he had made trial of the matter. But for 
the time he did not and, indeed, could not see clearly. 
‘‘He had,” says Brastow, “‘something like the same struggle 
with respect to entering the ministry that Robertson had. 
With Robertson the difficulty was largely a sense of spir- 
itual unfitness and the attractions of a more active life that 
appealed to his imagination. With Bushnell it seems to 
have been the attractions of the legal profession. .. . 
Both of these princely men entered the ministry oppressed 
with a certain sense of unfitness. It is a very noteworthy 
fact that many men, who have proved themselves to be, 
as we say, ‘born preachers,’ men who in all ways were fitted 
for the work of the ministry, men most devoutly conscien- 
tious and spiritually minded, and who have exerted a most 
powerful influence in their day, have had this shrinking 
sense of unfitness. The instances are numerous. It is 
noteworthy, too, that in every case—and in these two cases 
preéminently—they have risen superior to it, and the very 
shrinking seems to have been a condition of greater 
power.” 

So the will of Bushnell struggled against the inclinations 
of his conscience. But there was his mother’s deep desire, 
and her solemn dedication of his unissued life to God, 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 149 
Whatever he might do, how could he recall that dedica- 
tion, how could he take himself off the altar on which she 
had so trustfully laid him? She might have been mistaken; 
but he was afraid she was not. All this he seems to have 
felt, whatever she may have or may not have told him about 
the secret transaction between herself and God. There, 
too, was her wise management of the matter, her silent 
and unobtrusive insistence upon her certainty of the course 
he ought to take. Her influence over him was profound and 
decisive, and all the more so because of the wisdom of her 
method and the singular spiritual insight which governed 
all her action. It was the constraint of his mother’s desire 
which under God made him a minister. Moreover, there 
was underneath his reluctance a remarkable fitness for the 
work of Christian preaching. He was preéminently a 
preacher. His outstanding gifts marked him for the pulpit 
and designated him to its ministry. Brastow thinks he 
certainly had in him the making of a philosopher. This 
may be doubted. He had in him a certain aptitude for 
philosophy no doubt; but that the fullness of the gifts of 
the philosopher resided in him does not so readily appear. 
His supreme aptitude was for preaching. His very genius 
fitted him for it. Eminent success attained in a particular 
calling cannot safely be taken as a warrant that any man 
would have succeeded equally well in another. 

While at home on a farewell visit en route to his proposed 
settlement in the West, Bushnell received a notice of his 
appointment as a tutor in Yale College. He wrote a letter 
to President Day declining the appointment. But his 
mother intervened. ‘‘As I was going out of the door,” he 
says, ‘‘putting the wafer in my letter, | encountered my 
mother and told her what I was doing. Remonstrating 
now very gently, but seriously, she told me that she could 
not think I was doing my duty. ‘You have settled this 


150 PRINCES OF CTHE CHRIS) Eas 


question without any consideration at all that I have seen. 
Now, let me ask it of you to suspend your decision till you 
have at least put your mind to it. This you certainly 
ought to do, and my opinion still further is [she was not apt 
to make her decision heavy in this manner] that you had 
best accept the place.’ I saw at a glance where her heart 
was, and I could not refuse the postponement suggested. 
The result was that I was taken back to New Haven, where, 
partly by reason of a better atmosphere in religion, I was 
to think myself out of my overthinking, and discover how 
far above reason is trust.’’ He had tried to dig out a re- 
ligion by his head, and found that all the while he was 
pushing it practically away. 

He entered upon his service as tutor at Yale in the au- 
tumn of 1829, continuing at the same time his study of law 
and intending still to enter upon the practice of that pro- 
fession. Then there came a great revival in the college, 
sweeping almost the entire community into a new and more 
profound religious experience. Munger quotes the follow- 
ing account of the revival and Bushnell’s relation to it 
from Dr. Robert McEwen, who himself was at the time a 
tutor in the college: ‘‘ What, then, in this great revival was 
this man to do, and what was to become of him? Here he 
was, ... ready to be admitted to the bar, successful and 
popular as a college instructor, but all at sea in doubt, and 
default religiously. That baptism of the Holy Ghost and 
of fire compassed him all about. When the work was at 
its height, he and his division of students, who fairly wor- 
shiped him, stood unmoved apparently when all beside 
were ina glow. The band of tutors had established a daily 
meeting of their own, and all were now united in it but Bush- 
nell. What days of travail and wondering those were over 
him! None dare approach him. He stood far more than 
primus inter pares among all. Only Henry Durant tried 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 151 


carefully and cautiously to hit some joint in his armor. 
But even he, though free in his confidence, seemed to make 
no advance, when, all at once, the advance came boldly 
and voluntarily from Bushnell himself. Said he to Durant: 
‘I must get out of this woe. Here am I what I am, and all 
these young men hanging to me in their indifference amidst 
this universal earnestness on every side.’ And we were told 
what he said he was going to do—to invite these young 
men to meet him some evening in the week, when he would 
lay bare his position and their own, and declare to them 
his determination and the decision they ought to make with 
him for themselves. Perhaps there never was pride more 
lofty laid down voluntarily in the dust than when Horace 
Bushnell thus met those worshipers of his. The result was 
overwhelming.’’ When he had been beaten about for many 
days in darkness and tempest and had not been able to find 
the land, the greatest crisis of his life reached its crest as 
he tossed upon the flood one day alone in his room. Coming 
back to the college after years had tested the experience 
in the stern issues of life and the ministry, he adverted 
to the circumstance of his conversion by way of illus- 
trating a point in his well-known sermon “On _ the 
Dissolving of Doubts” preached in the chapel. Going on 
to say that in the crisis of his experience he had asked him- 
self whether there was any truth which he really did be- 
lieve, and whether he had acted up to the requirements of 
what he believed, he continues: ‘‘‘ Here, then, will I begin. 
If there is a God, as I rather hope there is, and very dimly 
believe, he is a right God. If I have lost him in wrong, 
perhaps I shall find him in right. Will he not help me, or, 
perchance, even be discovered to me?’ Now the decisive 
moment is come. He drops on his knees, and there he 
prays to the dim God, dimly felt, confessing the dimness 
for honesty’s sake, and asking for help that he may begin 


1o2 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


a right life. He bows himself on it as he prays, choosing 
it to be his unalterable, eternal endeavor. It is an awfully 
dark prayer, in the look of it; but the truest and best he 
can make, the better and the more true that he puts no 
orthodox colors on it; and the prayer and the vow are so 
profoundly meant that his soul is borne up into God’s_ 
help, as it were, by some unseen chariot, and permitted to 
see the opening of heaven even sooner than he opens his 
eyes. He rises, and it is as if he had gotten wings. The 
whole sky is luminous about him... . After this all trouble- 
some doubt of God’s reality is gone, for he has found him!”’ 
He was loath not to disclose, more definitely than hitherto 
the sermon had done, the identity of the subject of this 
experience and he feelingly remarked: ‘‘There is a story 
lodged in the little bedroom of one of these dormitories, 
which I pray God his recording angel may note, allowing 
it never to be lost.” 

It was an experience hardly less poignant than that 
which Frederick W. Robertson had in the biting solitudes 
of the Tyrol. And the effect was the same in each case: 
it settled one man and the other unwaveringly in the con- 
trolling convictions of his life. 

Bushnell’s experience in the revival opened to him the 
door into the ministry. He entered the Yale Divinity 
School in 1831. Dr. N. W. Taylor was his ablest and most 
influential teacher in theology. Neither of them, however, 
was ever able greatly to appreciate the other, and much 
less came of their contact in its influence upon Bushnell 
than might otherwise have been the case. There were 
certain theological questions, pertaining mostly to Cal- 
vinism, which were in a state of agitation at the time; and 
there were some questions of casuistry pertaining to the 
treatment of slavery; and Taylor and Bushnell were at the 
opposite poles on these questions. Both men were at fault 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 153 


in the matter; and yet there was a sense in which neither 
of them was at fault: for it must be conceded that each of 
them was thoroughly honest in his opinion and perfectly 
straightforward in his action. Bushnell was much in- 
fluenced from his college life onward by Coleridge’s ‘‘ Aids 
to Reflection,’’ owing more to it, he said, than any other 
book except the Bible. But with all his powers of reflection 
he seems to have been drawn more and more to the idea 
that ‘‘the heart makes the theologian.” 

He obtained his license to preach and had expected then 
to leave New Haven. But a tender attraction which he 
had found in a Bible class of young ladies he had-begun to 
teach held him, and he returned for another winter, occu- 
pying the time in writing sermons and in preaching occa- 
sionally. 


ENTHRONED IN HARTFORD—PREACHER AND PASTOR 


Nobody would write it the other way; he was preacher 
and pastor, and not pastor and preacher. Nevertheless, 
there need be no inference here that he was neglectful of 
his pastoral obligations. He acknowledged this to be a 
difficult and defective side of his service. Still he strove 
to perform it and wished to know personally all his people. 
He visited them all around once a year, and more frequently 
as occasion required. He went to Hartford in the first 
instance merely as a pulpit supply under the terms of an 
engagement which bound him for only a short time. He 
confessed afterwards with some mortification that at the 
time he had not expected to remain long in the ministry. ,, 
“T thought if I could sometime be called to a professorship ~ 
of moral philosophy,’ he said, “‘it would be a more satis- 
factory and higher field of exertion.’”’ By the time he was 
moved to make this admission, however, he was able to go 
on and say: ‘‘ Now all other employments, even the highest 


154 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAR 


and most honorable, appear to me petty and dry compared 
with the ministry of Jesus Christ, and it seems an offense 
to be repented of that I should have ever have allowed any- 
thing else to come into comparison with this.”’ Happily 
his course ran on contrary to his own designs and soon the 
Hartford Church called him by a unanimous vote to its 
regular pastorate. Shortly afterwards he received his or- 
dination. Already he is writing out in full two sermons a 
week for his pulpit. These he read. At this time he never 
extemporized. Later he was driven to the extemporaneous 
method by ill health. Whether his earlier method had 
anything to do with his ill health does not clearly appear. 

The years ran on in Hartford with their usual quota of 
events. In the year of his settlement there Bushnell was 
married to Miss Mary Apthorp, of New Haven. Their 
wedlock was ennobled by the purity of the character of each 
of them and by the singleness of the devotion of each to the 
other. There was an early appearance of ill health on his 
part from which he was never afterwards wholly freed. 
He was offered a college presidency and declined. Wes- 
leyan College, of Middletown, Conn., conferred on him the 
degree of Doctor of Divinity. He lost a child by death 
and found himself sorely smitten. But by this death he 
said he had learned more of experimental religion than in 
all his life before. 

Early in 1845 there was a complete breakdown in his 
health, and he spent ayear in Europe. Two or three years 
after his return, at the end of an earnest quest, he found his 
life flowing in a deeper, steadier current of religious faith 
and devotion than ever before. The effect of this fresh and 
fuller experience upon his preaching was natural and 
noticeable. In the meantime he was delivering addresses, 
theological and literary, on various occasions with both 
open and subtle effectiveness and power. ‘In his writing 


PULPIT AND; PASTORATE 155 


y 


and speaking,’ says Dr. C. A. Bartol, an intimate friend 
and admirer, a minister of the Unitarian Church, “was 
transcendent and consummate, though unconscious, art. 
He was cast in the rarest mold of the great Sculptor’s 
fashion and design; but his unblemished deportment was 
his wedding garment, and his transport of devotion his 
daily assumption into the skies.”’ 

At the end of twenty years of service in the pastorate of 
the North Church, Hartford, he reviewed his ministry 
there, expressing especial satisfaction in the fact that he 
could feel that providence had put him there. ‘‘My con- 
viction has been more and more confirmed,” he said, 
“that I am placed among you by the call of God, here and 
nowhere else to fulfill the particular errand for which I 
was sent into the world.” 

There were still marked alternations in the state of his 
health, every variation toward the unfavorable side causing 
him more serious apprehension than the one which had 
gone before. He returned from a long sojourn in California 
in January, 1857, apparently in perfect health. But the 
comforting expectations thereby aroused were doomed to a 
speedy dissipation. 

The great revival of 1857-58 swept into Hartford, and 
Bushnell threw himself very heartily into the demands 
which this made upon him. He resorted to extemporaneous 
preaching and found himself more effective in the attempt 
than he had dared to hope. One of his deacons remarked 
upon this and thought he should never preach any more 
written sermons. 

Failing health compelled him at the end of twenty-six 
years to resign his pastorate, the only one he ever held. 
His people generously made him a gift of $10,000, and he 
went out in quest of the health he was never to find. He 
struggled on, a part of the time on only one lung, for seven- 


156 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


teen years longer, writing much and preaching occasional- 
ly, and then laid down his withered body in the city of his 
adoption in the early morning of February 17, 1876. He 
had taken an active interest in the civic as well as the re- 
ligious life of the city which he had rendered proud of his 
citizenship, and the spacious public park there was changed 
in his honor to bear his name. 

As the death twilight had begun to draw him within its 
somber folds he was visited by a dear friend, the Rev. 
Joseph Twichell. They had talked of the last inexplicable 
things until the consciousness of a silent Presence made 
them silent. Then Bushnell said: ‘“‘Pray, my brother, 
pray.” ‘‘You pray,” returned the other. So Bushnell 
began, and burying his face in his hands, he poured out 
such a rapture of trust in the living God that Twichell 
said: ‘‘I was afraid to put out my hand lest I should touch 
God.” 


THEOLOGICAL ENTANGLEMENTS 


Theological dissent began in Bushnell in his seminary 
days. One of his instructors of the time said he was a 
‘‘t’other side man.’’ The saying can hardly be without 
some foundation in truth. Still it must be said that, though 
he did sit with the opposition, he did not differ from prev- 
alent orthodox opinion merely for the sake of the difference. 
He had a strong bent toward independence of mind; and 
he had some of the defects of this quality. He had but the 
slightest capacity for receiving from others, and this of 
necessity restricted his own viewpoint. Both Brastow and 
Munger, each of whom has given a valuable study of the 
man, his method, and his ministry, have noted this. Bras- 
tow has said that his neglect of what others had done and 
thought and said was the serious fault of his life. When 
this inability to profit by the thinking of others was joined 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 157 


to his confidence in his ability to do his own thinking and 
to shape his own opinions, the result could not always be 
either an advantage to himself or tend to bring him into 
amicable relations with those from whom he differed. He 
was a brilliant but not a balanced thinker. He loved the 
truth with an undivided mind. He was willing to pay any 
price for its possession. And he was willing to obey without 
parley or palaver at once its least and its highest behests. 
But his subjective prepossessions outweighed in the scales 
of his thinking what was sometimes the saner thinking of 
others. But his solitariness was, as Dr. Austin Phelps has 
said, not an affectation of independence. ‘It was in the 
original make of the man. He was by nature a solitaire 
in his thinking.’’ But even so, the defects of the quality 
were inescapable. 

Almost from the beginning of his ministry in Hartford 
there were murmurs of disapprobation of certain opinions 
he expressed. This grew on the part of many into settled 
opposition to the position he occupied. He did not mean 
to be heretical. Some men like it for its own sake. But 
Bushnell was too big for that. He did not mean to be a 
heretic; nor did he think he was. He believed that on the 
controverted points he differed from prevailing opinion 
only in that he had gone back to original orthodoxy. His 
peculiar views on the limitations of language only compli- 
cated the situation. Language manifestly has its limita- 
tions, particularly as a means of expressing spiritual truth. 
But it cannot bear such limitations as Bushnell imposed - 
upon it and be still a trustworthy medium of communicating 
religious truth from man to man. 

From causes such as these the theological entanglements 
in which he was involved resulted. His views on the 
Trinity and the Atonement were vigorously challenged; 
and there was an even more serious dispute over his views 


158 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


with regard to the fall of man and his depravity and re- 
generation. He had his opponents and his defenders, and 
there were long-continued efforts to bring him to trial for 
heresy. A committee to consider charges against him was 
appointed by the General Association of the Congregational 
Churches of Connecticut. A majority report exonerated 
him, and this report by a considerable majority was adopted 
by the Association. Ineffectual efforts to force a trial 
persisted for a long time. At length his Church withdrew 
from the Consociation of which it was a member, and a 
trial after that action, though not impossible, was much 
more difficult. Indeed the whole matter of the trial of a 
minister for heresy under the form of organization of the 
Congregational Churches is beset with many difficulties. 
The mother of Phillips Brooks once wrote him a letter in 
which she warned him against certain of the sermons of 
Bushnell as being no better than the Unitarianism under 
which she had suffered all her young life. When he had 
passed beyond the reach of human trials of whatever sort, 
Dr. Phelps wrote that, while he had often been provoked 
to dissent from Bushnell’s theological views, he found the 
inner spirit of the man when he came near him to be beauti- 
fully and profoundly Christlike, if that of uninspired man 
ever was, and that whatever the forms of his belief may 
have been he was eminently a man of God. 


PRESTIGE AS A PREACHER 


Bushnell began his ministry—save for occasional preach- 
ing which went before and some after his active ministry— 
in the pulpit in which he ended it. What did that pulpit 
mean the first time he ascended it? And what did it mean 
when he left it to his successor? By how much did he in- 
crease the measure and meaning of it? Did he take a mere 
pedestal and build a great figure in the history of preaching 


BULELE AND: PASTORATE 159 


upon it? or did both pedestal and figure vanish when he 
was gone? Did he take that pulpit and establish it like a 
city set upon a hill? or did he leave the city around him in 
darkness? It is easy to write extravagantly of a.man like 
Bushnell. But must not a frankly affirmative answer to 
all these questions command a ready assent? The develop- 
ment of life, the growth of a man, is a process which is still 
girt round with ineffaceable lines of mystery, as in every 
case we must recognize. But the very mystery contributes 
a certain increase of interest to the study. 

There were notable ways in the case of Bushnell in which 
both his mind and the man were fashioned for the business 
of Christian preaching: 

1. He had to begin with an intuitional order of intellect 
as distinguished from that character of mind which is more 
severely logical and scientific in its processes. It is not 
the safest nor always the sanest order of mind. It may too 
much disregard those processes which, though they must 
go on foot and require much plodding and patience, are 
nevertheless requisite means of tutoring the mind in its 
search for knowledge and truth. ‘‘ Perhaps if he had been 
more of a plodder,” says the then Protestant Episcopal 
Bishop of Rhode Island, writing a chapter for Mrs. Cheney’s 
life of her father, ‘‘and had taken time to familiarize him- 
self with other men’s thoughts, he might have saved himself 
some trouble.’’ The plodding and the patience seem almost 
to enter in as a part of the discipline of the truth itself 
once they have formed a part of the process by which it is 
acquired. But Bushnell sought it by swifter means, and 
secured thereby, not a firmer grasp of it, to be sure, and yet 
a sort of rapture of acquaintance with it and a fervor of 
trust in it which have a peculiar value in preaching. ‘‘He 
was emphatically a seer and not a reasoner,” said Dr. 
Phelps. And the seer, wrapt in his vision, though less 


160 PRINCES OF, THE CHRISTIAN 


critical, is also less cold; is more impassioned, though less 
didactic; and is therefore by not an inconsiderable measure 
a better preacher. The truth, if it is to be preached with 
passion, must be seen as well as known, must be vivified 
to the imagination as well as certified to the reason, and 
must first warm the heart which in turn warms it. Bush- 
nell believed that the sermon should kindle worship, and 
in his hands it did. But to do this kind of preaching the 
preacher’s own heart must become an altar and his lips 
must become a censer. 

2. Bushnell had also a philosophical trend of mind. 
Theology can never complete its concepts without the aid 
of those ideas and principles which are the ultimates for 
both theology and philosophy. Bushnell was not a the- 
ologian in any technical sense. He exerted a marked in- 
fluence upon the theology of his own and the immediately 
succeeding time. But it was more by the impact of his 
pulpit and of his trenchant thinking upon the theological 
situation that he exerted his influence than by any system- 
atic results of his work. Theology as a science or a system 
is not intuitionally discerned. But Bushnell had a philo- 
sophical bent of mind, and such a mind if it be religious 
has a strong affinity for religious truth. He obeyed the 
order of his own mind and was a more effective preacher 
than if he had ‘‘thought too precisely on the event.’’ This 
is not to say that the systematic mind cannot preach. 
Robertson, Liddon, Dale, Magee, and McLaren are the 
sufficient answer to any such inference as that. But 
Bushnell, able as he was intellectually, had his point of 
difference. He did not believe that truth could be too se- 
verely systematized. He loved ultimate truth—that was 
the philosopher in him—and he sought it as it was given 
him to see it. This again was the preacher in him. The 


ee 


mor AND PASTORATE 161 


—but systematic theology is not preaching. The philoso- 
pher may be a preacher—a grand preacher—but systems 
of philosophy do not constitute preaching. Preaching is a 
freer, more searching and appealing thing than any system 
can be. And in this freer and more vital realm Bushnell 
lived and thought and had his being. This led him, as 
Brastow has suggested, to the more determined ‘‘cultiva- 
tion of the preacher’s habit of mind, and the aggregate 
result for the world was doubtless more and better than it 
would have been had he been a more consistent philo- 
sophical thinker.” 

3. He had by both endowment and cultivation a keenly 
incisive mind. By the propulsion both of nature and of 
grace there issued in him a decided homiletic habit and 
cast of mind. Such a mind is put upon no strain to find 
homiletic values in the Bible, in life, history, poetry, 
science, theology, philosophy, nature, and in all the mind’s 
contact with what is within or without. When the ener- 
gizing of his heart and mind and conscience was turned to 
the task of preaching there was no lost motion, no mis- 
direction of energy, or aim, or motive. There have been 
many such men, though still all too few, in the Christian 
pulpit. It is not blind paths they follow. They do not 
alone come to their goal. 


“A God 
Marshall’d them, gave them their goal.”’ 


One feels all of this concerning Bushnell. His rank is 
among the princes of the Christian pulpit and pastorate. 
There were those who counted him the ablest preacher of 
his day. Dr. S. Parkes Cadman places him alongside 
Lyman Beecher, William Ellery Channing, Charles G. 
Finney, Matthew Simpson, Henry Ward Beecher, and 
Phillips Brooks as ‘‘the seven American clergymen whose 
1 


162 PRINCES OF THE VCHRISiiAas 


preéminent service swept beyond sectarian boundaries,”’ 
and justly obtained the wider distinction. 

4, He was singularly trenchant and effective in his power 
of expression. His utterance rose easily and naturally 
from notes of tender sympathy and comfort to an un- 
wonted level of majesty and splendor. Preaching along 
evenly one Sunday evening on heaven soon after the loss 
of his only boy by death, he clutched the very heartstrings 
of his audience at a single stroke when he quietly but 
earnestly asked: ‘‘Have not I a harper there?’’ Passages 
that add a splendor to the very page on which they are 
printed abound in his sermons. Preaching on ‘‘The Lost 
Purity Restored,’ he points out how tremendous is the 
divine undertaking for the purification of souls; ‘‘It is 
curious to observe, when we read the Scripture, what an 
apparatus of cleansing God appears to have set in array 
for the purification of souls; sprinklings, washings, bap- 
tisms of water, and, what are more searching and more 
terribly energetic purifiers, baptisms of fire; fierce meltings 
also of silver in the refiner’s crucible; purifyings of the 
flesh and purgings of the conscience; lustrations of blood, 
even of Christ’s own blood; washings of the word, and 
washings of regeneration by the Holy Ghost. It would 
seem, on looking at the manifold array of cleansing ele- 
ments, applications, gifts, and sacraments, as if God had 
undertaken it as the great object and crowning mercy of 
his reign, to effect a solemn purgation of the world.” 


THE PRopUcTs OF His PEN 


Much of his published work was the product of his pulpit, 
particularly as this appeared in sermonic form. But there 
was a distinct literary achievement besides. The years 
after he resigned his pastorate and was preaching only ir- 
regularly were given to literary labors. This naturally fol- 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 163 


lowed in the wake of what he had done in his more active 
life. And yet it was also natural that it should assume 
some special phases which were possible only to his new 
and less strenuous situation. His principal publications, 
aside from his sermons, were several treatises on literary 
subjects and on theological subjects under the titles, ‘‘God 
in Christ,’ ‘‘Nature and the Supernatural,” ‘Christian 
Nurture,’’ ‘‘ The Vicarious Sacrifice,” and ‘‘ Forgiveness and 
Law.’ The last named was later published as a second 
volume of ‘The Vicarious Sacrifice.’”’ That he reacted 
from his own views as originally expressed in this volume 
is a well-known fact. ‘‘He became conscious of a limitation 
in his former view, as having regarded too exclusively the 
manward relations of that great subject, whose two sides 
he saw to be essential to each other and vitally connected.” 
Prof. Herbert T. Andrews, writing in The Expositor, 
London, issue of March, 1924, urges that the instinct to 
which the evangelical faith appeals is ineradicable, and 
in that connection refers to this very matter of Bushnell’s 
modification of his earlier views with respect to the Atone- 
ment. Bushnell, he says, ‘after writing two volumes to 
prove the folly and perversity of all the theories which at- 
tach objective value to the Atonement, is driven, in spite 
of himself, at last to admit ‘that though in the facts of our 
Lord’s passion, outwardly regarded, there is no sacrifice, 
or oblation, or atonement, or propitiation, yet if we ask, 
How shall we come to God by the aid of this martyrdom? 
the facts must be put into the molds of the altar, and with- 
out these forms of the altar we should be utterly at a loss 
in making any use of the Christian facts which would set 
us in a condition of practical reconciliation with God. 
Christ is good, beautiful, wonderful. His disinterested 
love is a picture by itself. His forgiving patience melts 
into my feeling. His passion rends my heart. But what is 


164 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


he for? And how shall he be made to me the salvation 
that I want? One word—he is my sacrifice—opens all to 
me, and beholding him with all my sin upon him, I count 
him my offering. I come unto God by him and enter into 
the Holiest by his blood.’”’ 

“Christian Nurture’’ was one of the most stimulating 
and thought-provoking volumes he ever produced. It is 
not until this day by any means devoid of these qualities. 
On the one side he contended that “‘character can be 
transmitted, and thus Christianity can be organized into 
the race and the trend of nature be made to set in that 
direction.’”’ But it was objected that this ‘‘resolved the 
whole matter into organic laws, explaining away both 
depravity and grace.”’ On the other hand he insisted 
“that as Christ is the Saviour of children, they have an 
inherent right to a place in his Church, which is to give 
character to their nurture.’’ He had the difficulty, which 
has not yet disappeared from this field of thought, of 
properly balancing two sides of a great truth. His volume 
on ‘‘Nature and the Supernatural’’ contains the famous 
chapter on ‘“‘The Character of Jesus Forbids His Possible 
Classification with Men.” It is a superb piece of work 
both in thinking and in literary expression. Scarcely has 
he begun when he has this incisive and eloquent statement 
of the grounds of the discussion: ‘‘We take up the account 
of Christ, in the New Testament, just as we would any 
other ancient writing, or as if it were a manuscript just 
brought to light in some ancient library. We open the 
book, and discover in it four distinct biographies of a 
certain remarkable character, called Jesus Christ. He is 
miraculously born of Mary, a virgin of Galilee, and de- 
clares, himself, without scruple, that he came out from 
God. Finding the supposed history made up, in great part, 
of his mighty acts, and not being disposed to believe in 


Perit AND (PASTORATE 165 


miracles and marvels, we should soon dismiss the book as a 
tissue of absurdities too extravagant for belief were we not 
struck with the sense of something very peculiar in the 
character of this remarkable person. Having our attention 
arrested thus by the impression made on our respect, we 
are put on inquiry, and the more we study it the more 
wonderful, as a character, it appears. And before we have 
done it becomes, in fact, the chief wonder of the story; 
lifting all the other wonders into order and intelligent 
proportion round it, and making one compact and glorious 
wonder of the whole picture—a picture shining in its own 
clear sunlight upon us, as the truest of all truths—Jesus, 
the Divine Word, coming out from God, to be incarnate 
with us, and be the vehicle of God and salvation to the 
race.” 

That Bushnell’s work in printed form has had the power 
to fertilize many minds which did not accept all his con- 
clusions is incontestably true; and at the same time the 
fact is not at all anomalous. Were it not for the friction 
of mind upon mind at points of earnest difference, where 
were the stimulating effect and mental sharpening and 
balancing due to the fact? 

His printed distinctively homiletic product is preserved 
in three volumes of sermons—‘‘Sermons for the New Life,”’ 
“Christ and His Salvation,’”’ and ‘Sermons on Living Sub- 
jects.’ These sermons bear the attest of very high homi- 
letic value. Phillips Brooks and Henry Ward Beecher are 
usually accounted to be the greatest American preachers, 
some according the palm of precedence to the one, while 
others accord it to the other. But the question may be 
seriously raised whether Bushnell has not a higher con- 
structive homiletic value than either of them. They had 
each of them his own superb gifts, but he has his distinct 
ability too. Perhaps he surpassed both of them in sheer 


166 PRINCES ‘OR* THE  CHRiSs Bias 


intellectual force. But we are thinking more particularly 
of distinctive homiletical qualities. Principal George 
Adam Smith said once in conversation that Bushnell is 
the preacher’s preacher as Spenser is the poet’s poet, and 
that his sermons were on the shelf of every manse in Scot- 
land. 

The sermons as a whole, and certain of them conspicu- 
ously, possess a marked structural quality. They are 
constructed and are not merely a mass of material, how- 
ever valuable in itself, heaped together in unrelated parts 
and left to struggle aimlessly and hopelessly through the 
auditor’s unrewarded half hour, or perchance to drag on to 
a conclusion which never concludes. Sermons, of course, 
cannot be compact unless they have structure. Bushnell’s 
sermons are built, not thrown together. A great building 
may have been brought together out of a thousand forests 
and mines, but it is not a building until it is constructed. 
There are ten thousand sources of sermons, but they become 
sermons only through a structural process. And the wider 
the variety of sources from which they come the greater is 
the need of a structural unity and design. California red- 
wood and Georgia marble may go together into the same 
building, but they require to be directed to their respective 
places in the plan by the science of the architect and the 
skill of the builder. Bushnell was a builder. He thought 
out his theme until it became as clear as a proposition in 
logic. His sermon on ‘“‘Every Man’s Life a Plan of God”’ 
has this statement of its theme: That God has a definite 
life plan for every human person, girding him, visibly or in- 
visibly, for some exact thing, which 1t will be the true sig- 
nificance and glory of his life to have accomplished. A sermon 
with its theme thus stated has already passed the most im- 
portant and the most difficult stage of its construction. 

With a skill none the less admirable he derives his themes 


BULELIP CAND PASTORATE 167 


from his text, exhibiting them in a true and, if the fact 
be so, an organic connection. His text is, Give ye them to 
eat, in its connection with the feeding of the five thousand 
on the shore of the Galilean Sea, when the disciples had 
wished to disburden themselves of the people’s presence. 
Jesus answers them in the words of the text, and Bushnell’s 
theme is, “‘Duty Not Measured by Our Own Ability.” 
When the main thought lines of a sermon have been laid 
out as he does it, the sermon is bound to succeed, so far 
as intellectual considerations are concerned, in any but the 
hands of a bungler. And a bungler can never lay them out 
like that. On the text, Take, therefore, the talent from him, 
the theme is, ‘The Capacity for Religion Extirpated by 
Disuse.”’ The text, Then went in also that other disciple, 
has for its theme, ‘‘Unconscious Influence.’’ These ser- 
mons—and there are many others like them—in their 
texts and titles constitute a consummate study in homi- 
letics. 

Some of the sermons have a several and distinctive fame 
of their own. The sermon on “Every Man’s Life a Plan 
of God’’ made a very deep and wide impression. The 
New York Tribune classed it as one of the three greatest 
ever preached in the English language, naming Canon 
Mozley’s on ‘The Reversal of Human Judgment”’ and 
Phillips Brooks’s on ‘“‘The Gold and the Calf’’ as the 
other two. The remarkable fact is recorded of the sermon 
on ‘‘Duty Not Measured by Our Own Ability’’ that it was 
preached in the first year of his ministry. The sermon on 
“Unconscious Influence,’’ with its theme and variations 
of it, has perhaps been reproduced in more pulpits than 
any other sermon ever preached in America or England. 

Bushnell delivered an address at Andover Theological 
Seminary in 1860 on “Pulpit Talent’’ which was afterwards 
incorporated in his book called “Building Eras.” It is 


168 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


replete with fine suggestions, as, for instance: “‘ An immense 
overdoing in the way of analysis often kills a sermon.” 
‘A great many preachers die of style; that is, of trying to 
soar; when, if they would only consent to go afoot as their 
ideas do, they might succeed and live.” ‘The artistic air 
kills everything.”” ‘‘The greatest fault possible to a preach- 
er is to be absolutely faultless.”’ 

But the highest value of the lecture lies, not in seques- 
trated passages, but in its main contentions. He men- 
tions first the ‘‘canonical talents,’ as he styles them— 
scholarship; a metaphysical and theological thinking tal- 
ent; style or talent for expression; and a talent of manner 
and voice for speaking. These he regards as “‘cultivatable 
talents,’ but would set a limit upon their possession and 
use. Proceeding to what he calls the ‘‘ preéminent preach- 
ing talents,’’ he is more urgent in his contention, and is 
evidently self-revealing. He names first among talents of 
this order ‘‘a great conscience or a firmly accentuated 
moral nature,’ holding that “‘no great and high authority 
is possible in a movement on souls without a great con- 
science.’ His analysis of the weak and insufficient con- 
science is as keen as a whetted blade. His denunciation of 
the preacher who subjects himself to a control so mean 
and low is all but pitiless: ‘‘No matter what, or how great, 
his promise on the score of his other gifts and acquire- 
ments, he cannot be impressive, because there is no ring 
of authority in his moral nature.’”’ He next names ‘“‘a 
man’s atmosphere.’ Some atmospheres, good in themselves, 
he thinks are “‘disqualifications in the preacher”: ‘‘One 
carries about with him, for example, the inevitable literary 
atmosphere, and a shower bath on his audience could not 
more effectually kill the sermon.” He speaks of ‘‘ad- 
ministrative, organizing capacity’’ as requiring a very high 
and firm tone of character for its efficient employment, and 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 169 


closes with a reference to the law of talents as requiring 
to be wakened into power. 

In an autobiographic fragment intended probably as 
the beginning of a full account of his life he has these 
frankly personal words: ‘‘My figure in this world has not 
been great, but I have had a great experience. I have 
never been a great agitator, never pulled a wire to get the 
will of men, never did a politic thing. It was not for this 
reason, but because I was looked upon as a singularity— 
not exactly sane, perhaps, in many things—that I was 
almost never a president or vice president of any society, 
and almost never on a committee. Take the report of my 
doings on the platform of the world’s business, and it is 
naught. I have filled no place at all.’’ Nevertheless, for 
all that he lacked of perfection, whether in his thinking or 
his character—and in this he was scarcely alone—he filled 
a place which was large, and all the larger because in the 
fear of God he was able to care so little whether it was 
large. 


VII 


DAVID LIVINGSTONE! 
(1813-1873) 
A Lap AT A Loom 


Out of the Scottish Highlands there came a lad who 
through the high and heroic endeavor of his life has moved 
the world to a deeper devotion to Christ and stirred it to 
an intenser zeal for the cause of Christian missions. That 
lad was David Livingstone, born at Blantyre, on the Clyde, 
March 19, 1813. He came into the home of “poor and 
pious parents,’ as he himself insisted on saying on the 
tombstone erected to their memory; and both their poverty 
and their piety conferred their blessings on this their 
chosen child. He had the benefit of such schools as the 
village could furnish until at the still tender age of ten he 
was put to work in the cotton mills. In the mills he mingled 
study with his toils, snatching such brief intervals of time 
for application to the book which he spread before him on 
the machinery as might be secured from the heavy de- 
mands of his task. In the evenings at home, and in a 
night school which he attended for a while, his books were 
still his pursuit. Often at midnight, and later, his mother 
would be obliged to force his books from his hands, and 
send him off to bed; for she could not forget that again at 
six in the morning a boyish shadow must fall across the 
threshold of the factory door. The hard and monotonous 
toil of the mills Livingstone never regretted. He reckoned 
it rather as a valued part of his education. At the height 
of his greatness he was still a simple-minded man, and re- 
joiced in his fellowship with the common people. 


1Reprinted from Methodist Quarterly Review, April, 1913. 
(170) 


Powe @ hoe) ber VEE PUL REE 171 


Thou dost look back on what hath been, 
As some divinely gifted man, 
Whose life in low estate began, 

And on a simple village green. 


“OPEN A PATH ....OR PERISH” 


When Livingstone’s life began to broaden, it broadened 
in the missionary direction. As a child he had earnest 
thoughts on religion. But he was not converted until 
about his twentieth year, when, on reading Dick’s “ Philoso- 
phy of a Future State,” he saw “‘the duty and the ines- 
timable privilege immediately to accept salvation by 
Christ.’’ In this, as in all the other great affairs of his life, 
he acted with promptness and decision. He had not yet 
thought of being a missionary himself; but had resolved 
to give to the support of missions all he could earn above 
his necessary subsistence. Then there fell into his hands 
a German missionary’s appeal for China, and he laid his 
life on the altar, not for China’s redemption, as he thought, 
but for Africa’s. There now began that struggle for an 
education and for the necessary missionary preparation 
which only poverty can impose, and which only those who 
have fought with poverty over every step of the ground 
know how to estimate. First at Glasgow, seven miles 
away, whence he returned on Saturday evenings to the 
family at Blantyre, and then in London, he pursued his 
studies, mainly medical, until the London Missionary So- 
ciety, which had accepted him for service, judged him to 
be ready to go out. 

In 1839 Robert Moffat, himself a Scotchman of the 
straitest sect, came to England from heroic missionary 
service in Africa, and he and Livingstone met, their spirits 
never afterwards to be severed. England’s opium war was 
on with China, and Livingstone, through Moffat’s in- 
fluence, was turned aside from China to Africa. © 


172 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


Acting under the direction of the Society that sent him 
out, he sailed from England on the eighth day of Decem- 
ber, 1840. He was to proceed to Kuruman, the home of 
the Moffats in South Africa, and there await further orders. 
He could wait for orders, but he could not wait for work. 
He arrived at Kuruman, after the journey up from the 
south coast, on July 31, 1841, having before him an almost 
wholly undetermined sphere of labor. He was to have a 
station somewhere to the north. Not even the angels of 
God knew whither his course should lie. At that time the 
red lines now seen on the maps of Africa indicating his 
journeys could be traced only by that Eye which sees the 
end from the beginning. 

Two wasted years pass away, and he is still waiting for 
instructions from the Directors in London as to his per- 
manent quarters. But the hesitation and delay are theirs, 
not his. He has put himself at their disposal “‘to go any- 
where—provided 1t be forward.’’ And yet the years are not 
wasted, for he labors about Kuruman. And before the end 
of his first year on the field, a journey of seven hundred 
miles, taken on his own responsibility, was performed, lead- 
ing to a fuller knowledge of the country, a better knowledge 
of the natives, and to the selection of what he hoped would 
be the site for a station. Early the next year he goes 
again among these natives of the interior, in fulfillment 
of a promise he had made them on his first journey. On 
a third journey he traveled more than four hundred miles 
on oxback. Coming again to Kuruman, he found a letter 
from the Directors of the Society authorizing the formation 
of a settlement in the regions beyond. And those very 
terms, ‘“‘regions beyond,” had the sound of a trumpet in 
Livingstone’s ears. Give him that commission, and he 
will go. 

Mabotsa became his first station. Here he had the 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE , 173 


memorable encounter with the lion which came near to 
ending his career, and which gave him a limp and weakened 
arm for the rest of his life. And yet it was the marks of 
this encounter which led to the indisputable identification of 
his body when his last journey out of Africa ended in Eng- 
land. He had gone out with the natives to chase a lion 
which had that morning been destroying their sheep. The 
lion had been wounded, and sprang furiously upon him 
out of a thicket, throwing him to the ground and breaking 
a bone in his shoulder. When in a moment more a blow 
from the lion’s paw, which was already on his head, must 
have left him dead, a shot from the rifle of Livingstone’s 
native attendant drew the lion away to an attack upon this 
native himself, and then upon another, until, the previous 
shots having taken effect, he fell down dead. 

Another event of his Mabotsa life was to him of more 
deeply surpassing interest than even his encounter with 
the lion. Thither in the sweet autumn days of 1844 he 
brought Mary Moffat, a blushing bride. It was a romance 
in the forest, and as sweet a love story as ever was told. 

Amid all these experiences, grave and gay, perilous and 
felicitous, his work engaged his diligent and unremitting 
effort. Mabotsa, however, he felt obliged to leave, at a 
great sacrifice to himself, because of a disagreeable and 
unreasonable associate in the work. 

He settled next at Chonuane, about forty miles from 
Mabotsa, where his stay was of short continuance because 
the want of rain made both agriculture and the mission 
impossible. 

His third station was Kolobeng, situated on a river of 
the same name, where again he failed in making a per- 
manent settlement because of the lack of rain. This time 
the river itself dried up. At Kolobeng they left their 
first dead in a lonely African grave, a little blue-eyed baby 


174 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


girl who had been seized by a dread disease and carried 
away at the age of six weeks. It was the first grave in all 
the dark country around them on which there shone the 
light of a confessed hope in the resurrection of the dead. 

Livingstone now set out for the country of Sebituane, an 
influential chief of whom he had heard, toward the north. 
On this journey he discovered the large lake "Ngami and 
the river Zouga, and his fame as an explorer began to be 
secure. Already his success as an explorer was attributed 
to his influence as a missionary; for this very journey had 
baffled the best-equipped travelers before him. He failed 
at this time, however, to accomplish the direct object of 
his journey. 

Holding Kolobeng still as his base, he made his third 
attempt, and reached the country of Sebituane in 1851. 
He and Oswell, an English hunter and traveler, who proved 
in many ways a most valued friend of Livingstone’s, pro- 
ceeded still farther northward, passed through the town 
of Linyanti, and on the third of August discovered the 
Zambesi River. This great river was of course known at 
the coast where it emptied into the sea; but its existence 
in this locality was not known, and its discovery by Liv- 
ingstone was one of the greatest geographical feats with 
which his name is connected. 

Still no suitable locality for a station was found. There 
must be further journeying; and he turned back again 
toward the south, though not to rest there. The interior 
of Africa had lifted up her voice in his ears, and it never 
died out. ‘‘Providence,”’ said he, ‘‘seems to call me to the 
regions beyond.” There is in Jack London’s ‘‘Call of the 
Wild” the story of the great dog, Buck. This noble dog 
had many adventures with his master until at last they 
came to the edge of the great and lonely forests where the 
wolves have their habitat. With these wild creatures of 


meivielaeAN DesPASTORVEE 175 


the wilderness the dog became more and more familiar, 
and his aboriginal kinship to them more and more as- 
serted itself. For days at a time his master would miss him. 
At last the clear and overmastering call of the wild asserted 
itself, and the great dog galloped away with the wolves into 
the wilderness. Out of the far-away darkness of Africa 
David Livingstone heard calling him the deep voice of the 
aboriginal kinsmanship of mankind, and he went to help 
his enslaved and benighted brother. He had resolved to 
‘open a path through the country, or perish.” 

At this time the slave trade in its unspeakable horrors 
had begun to take a relentless grasp on his soul. Through 
these deep forests he met gangs of slaves being driven like 
beasts to the coasts. He traveled through great valleys 
strewn with their bones. Their skulls, all the more for the 
want of eyes, stared upon him from the hillsides. Their 
dead bodies floated past him in the rivers. When they 
anchored their boats overnight in the streams, they had 
to disengage their oars from the dead before they could 
proceed on their way in the morning. Nineteen thousand 
slaves from the Nyassa region alone passed under the cus- 
toms in Zanzibar in a single year. He would rather see the 
‘“‘Nyassa’’—intended for the navigation of the lake of the 
same name, but which he could never bring to the place— 
‘so down to the depths of the Indian Ocean,” than sell 
her for a slaver, much as he needed the money. Well might 
there have been preserved in memorial marble in West- 
minster Abbey his words to the New York Herald: “ All 
I can say in my solitude is, May heaven’s richest blessing 
come down on every one—American, English, Turk—who 
will help to heal this open sore of the world!”’ 


“IN JOURNEYINGS OFTEN” 


In the spring of 1852 Livingstone came down to Cape 


176 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


Town and sent Mrs. Livingstone and the children, now 
numbering four, for the better care of all of them, and es- 
pecially for the education of the children, to England. A 
year later Livingstone had returned far into the interior; 
and having searched in vain for a suitable location for 
permanent work, he began to prepare for his famous 
journey from Linyanti, in the central portion of the coun- 
try he had been traveling, to Loanda on the west coast. 
This journey occupied him from November 11, 1853, to 
May 31, 1854, and afforded the characteristic accompani- 
ments and incidents of his African traveling. He was ac- 
companied by none but natives. Oxen were his means of 
travel. They must ford many rivers, these often swollen 
to a flood, and wade innumerable marshes. Their food 
supply, and other equipment for comfort and safety, was 
pitifully insufficient. They must pass through savage 
tribes and encounter many a hostile frown when they 
came to where white traders had been before them. The 
temperature was above ninety degrees in the shade; Liv- 
ingstone was often ill with a burning fever; and there were 
scenes of savagery, slavery, and death on every hand. He 
brought his twenty-seven followers to Loanda and rested 
on an English bed after six months on the fever-breeding 
ground, but found not what he most longed for—letters 
from the loved ones beyond the seas. 

They wanted him to go to England. An English ship 
was in the harbor. Beyond the waves that washed these 
shores were wife and children, and the greetings of the 
nation that folded in her flag his devoted life. How often 
he had been ill! What tongueless sufferings he had borne! 
But the men who had come with him had to return, and 
they could not make the journey alone. Without knowing 
it, he sets them the example that shall bring his own body 
down to the sea on the other side of the continent when he 


Pao ee N Doe PASTORATE eis 


is dead. He goes with these black men back to Linyanti. 
He left Loanda in September of the year he had reached 
it, having tarried beyond his time, as he said in a letter to 
his wife, “‘in longing expectation of a letter from you.” 

He was not satisfied with the results this journey had 
yielded in prospective trade routes, and otherwise; and he 
resolves, on his return to Linyanti, which he does not reach 
until nearly a year after leaving Loanda, that he will try 
the direction toward the east coast. He sets out and 
reaches Quilimane, not far from the mouth of the Zambesi, 
May 20, 1856. On this journey he discovered the famous 
falls of the Zambesi River, and named them after England’s 
great Queen, Victoria. This is one of the grandest water- 
falls in the world. 

From Quilimane he returned to England, after an absence 
of sixteen years. There his renown, grown up unosten- 
tatiously and in simple fidelity in Africa, rose up with a 
universal voice to greet him. But no éclat could spoil his 
simplicity. Great dinners he despised. He got through 
them with more difficulty than he found in some of his 
African journeys. On the details of his multiplied welcome 
we cannot dwell. He wrote and published his “‘ Missionary 
Travels,’ which had a great sale. He went up to the Uni- 
versity of Glasgow to receive the honorary degree of 
Doctor of Laws. On these occasions the undergraduates 
had their sport at the expense of the great. Our own 
Lowell and Holmes had to run this gantlet when they re- 
ceived the University’s honors. The boys tried their 
raillery on Livingstone. They brought in their popguns 
and pea shooters. But the Doctor came down the aisle 
wasted and gaunt. He stood before them, his brow burned 
black by scorching African suns, his veins carrying the 
torture of twenty-seven African fevers, and the shoulder 


torn by the lion dropping a limp arm by his side, One or 
12 | 


178 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


two jokes were cracked, but they ‘‘flashed in the pan”; 
and the pea shooters went away into the depths of the 
boys’ pockets. The man before them was to speak; his 
lips parted and gave him utterance. He should soon go 
back to Africa, he said; and in going he should have three 
objects: ‘‘to open fresh fields for British commerce, to 
suppress the slave trade, and to propagate the gospel of 
Christ.” That great climax fell like the peal of a trumpet 
on the audience. The meanest boy in the galleries appre- 
ciated the relative values expressed, and ‘‘caught the con- 
tagion of the manly missionary’s earnestness.”’ And then 
he asked: ‘‘Shall I tell you what sustained me in my exiled 
life, among strangers whose language I could not under- 
stand?’’ In the moment’s pause that followed the-ques- 
tion, there was a deathlike silence, and every heart lifted 
itself in high expectancy. And then there came, with an 
effect which could scarcely have been surpassed since they 
were first uttered in Galilee, the unexpected words of 
Jesus: ‘‘Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
world.” 


A GRAVE BESIDE THE ZAMBESI 


Livingstone now severed his connection with the Mis- 
sionary Society, and went back to Africa with a govern- 
ment appointment and a moderate government aid. The 
Directors had some doubt about supporting as a missionary 
a man who was doing Livingstone’s kind of work. As for 
himself, he would eat no doubtful bread. Besides, the 
government was interested in many ways in his labors and 
would profit in all the outcome of his effort. He was made 
consul at Quilimane, and commander of an expedition for 
exploring Eastern and Central Africa. This brought him 
into the country of the Zambesi and Shiré rivers, and led 
to the discovery of the great Lake Nyassa, around which 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 179 


many of his aims afterwards clung. He beat up and down 
the rivers and traversed the unknown country for five 
years with infinite patience and courage. He had no end 
of trouble with his boats, which had been built for use on 
the lakes; and early in 1862 he came down the Zambesi to 
receive the ‘‘Lady Nyassa,” built in England and shipped 
out in sections, for use on Lake Nyassa, and to meet 
Mrs. Livingstone, coming up by sea from the south, 
whither she had gone when she came back with him from 
England, to be with the Moffats at Kuruman. Just beyond 
the shore line in the river those at sea saw in the early 
morning a little cloud of smoke rising, and very soon, ap- 
proaching in the smaller boat, they recognized Dr. Living- 
stone, and the famous gold-laced cap of his African travels. 
When he landed, a baby girl, who had been in the world 
almost a year before he learned by letter of her existence, 
was laid in his arms. 

Before three short months could come and go, Mrs. 
Livingstone was dead at the age of forty-one. But the 
blight of the African climate had fallen heavily upon her 
and had sapped away her life thus early. And the loneliness 
of her separated life in England had been heavier than the 
vicissitudes of any climate. She went to her grave by the 
great Zambesi, and forever it sings its mighty requiem of 
peace to her ashes. That deathbed consisted of only 
rough boxes covered with a soft mattress—that deathbed 
scene it were sacrilege to describe. More than four years 
afterwards in his journal, and, as if the tenderness of his 
thoughts carried him back to his childhood home among the 
Scottish hills, in the Scottish dialect he wrote: ‘‘ Poor Mary 
lies on Shupanga brae, ‘and beeks fornent the sun.’”’ 

He hears that the expedition is to be recalled, and won- 
ders if he is to go on the shelf. ‘“‘If I do,’ he says, ‘‘I make 
Africa the shelf.”” The expedition was recalled, and it was 


180 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTA 


a time of terrible discouragement, bereft as he was now of 
the aid both of the government and the Society. But he 
will not go back to England until his going can be connected 
with the prospect of a return to Africa. 


DARK AND BLOODY MANYUEMA 


But England lies once more in the path of his journey- 
ing. He made a trip in the ‘‘Lady Nyassa’’ across the 
Indian Ocean to Bombay, which was such an unparalleled 
performance that it might almost have justified the remark 
of Charles Francis Adams, that ‘Livingstone eclipsed 
Columbus.”’ | 

In England again, all his plans looked back to Africa. 
The proposition that he should return to do geographical 
work brings the answer that he would only go “‘as a mis-. 
sionary, and do geography by the way.” “The end of the 
geographical feat is only the beginning of the missionary 
enterprise,’ he had said long before. And he had not 
wavered. He wanted to make Africa known and “‘to 
bring it into the circuit of commerce and Christianity.” 
He wrote and published his books with this end in view. 
On this visit to England he wrote and published ‘“‘The 
Zambesi and Its Tributaries.”’ 

On August 8, 1866, he was again at Lake Nyassa. His 
object in this, his third and last great African journey, was 
in its comprehensive aspects the same that he had had all 
along. He would make “‘another attempt to open Africa 
to civilizing influences.”’ At the same time, accepting a 
suggestion made by Sir Roderick Murchison, who had been 
to him such a steadfast friend, he was taken captive by 
the idea that he might discover the sources of the Nile in 
the very country where he was going. The government 
again affords him aid; so does the Royal Geographical 
Society. And there were also considerable private gifts. 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 181 


He left Nyassa and pressed on toward Tanganyika, a 
larger and more interior lake. Some of his men left him and 
went to Zanzibar and told a most circumstantial story 
that he was dead. Meanwhile Livingstone, entirely ig- 
norant of this report and of the commotion it was about to 
raise in the world, was pushing on, half-starved, into the 
deeper distance and darkness of the interior. He lost the 
few goats he had for milk and was reduced to a diet of 
African maize, as poor and insufficient a means of sub- 
sistence as well could be imagined. ‘‘His food often con- 
sisted of bird seed, manioc roots, and meal.’’ To complete 
his miseries, he lost his medicine chest, and felt that the 
sentence of death had been pronounced against him. 

Toward the end of the year—it is now 1867—he dis- 
covers Lake Moero, and hears of Lake Bangweolo, on the 
southern shores of which he was to die. On the eighteenth 
of July, in the next year, he quietly records the discovery 
of this lake. 

From Bangweolo he at last reached Ujiji, far up on 
Tanganyika, but only to be met there by the bitter dis- 
appointment that the goods he expected had been stolen 
and wasted, and that his medicines and other indispensable 
supplies were thirteen days distant at Unyanyembe. At 
this period the extreme dreg of the bitter cup he was 
obliged to drain was the loss of his letters. Nearly all of 
them were lost. Difficulties and darkness seemed only to 
thicken around him. 

Nevertheless, he turns his face again toward the wilder- 
ness—a wilderness not for the want of inhabitants and a 
rich and prodigal output of nature, but a wilderness for the 
want of civilization. He went now into the dark and 
troubled Manyuema country, and thought his work might 
be finished in four or five months. But here he met the 
most unexampled hardships and difficulties of his life. In 


182 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


making his arrangements for the journey, and in the mat- 
ter of keeping up any remote sort of connection with 
civilization, ‘‘he was dependent on men who were not only 
knaves of the first magnitude, but who had a special ani- 
mosity against him, and a special motive to deceive, rob, 
and obstruct him in every possible way.’ The slave 
traders of Ujiji were the most abominable of that abomina- 
ble craft. Livingstone said he quite agreed with the sailor 
who on seeing them said: “If the devil doesn’t catch these 
fellows, we might as well have no devil at all.” 

In February, 1870, he was obliged to go into winter 
quarters in the woods about one hundred and fifty miles 
northwest of Ujiji; and when he set out again on the twen- 
ty-sixth of June, there were with him only the three faithful 
attendants, Susi, Chuma, and Gardner. The difficulties 
of the way were terrible. His feet, though often bruised and 
sore, were now in a worse condition than ever before; and 
he was at last compelled to desist, and to limp back tc 
Bambarré, the village of the chief of the Manyuema 
country, which he did not leave until February, 1871. 
How tediously, and yet how quickly, a year had gone by! 

‘‘Probably no human being,’’ says Dr. Blaikie in his 
noble biography, ‘‘was ever in circumstances parallel tc 
those in which Livingstone now stood.”’ Years had passed 
while his letters from home had been scattered as so much . 
waste in the wilderness. His mother tongue came to his 
lonely ears only in the broken speech of the humble natives 
who attended him. Or again perchance it reached him in 
the sound of his own voice as some irrepressible cry of 
homesickness burst from his aching heart. He was in 
hunger, in sickness, in pain, In weariness; in journeyings 
often; in perils of rivers; in perils of robbers; in perils 
among the heathen; in perils among false brethren; in 
perils in the wilderness; in watchings often, in cold and 





BUEPIT AND. PASTORATE 183 


nakedness, in deaths often; baffled beyond description in 
his immediate effort; and in grave anxiety as to the fruit 
of his past labors. What could have sustained him through 
it all? A year afterwards we find this backward-glancing 
line in his journal: ‘I read the whole Bible thrcugh four 
times whilst I was in Manyuema.”’ 

He tries once more, and reaches his farthest point west- 
ward, Nyangwe, on the Lualaba River. This river he 
earnestly desires to explore, for he thinks it may leave the 
continent through the Nile, and not through the Congo, 
as we now know to be the case. He would fain go farther, 
and makes his plans; but he witnesses a horrible massacre 
in a village by the river, and in the slaughter he sees his 
own plans struck down. This scene of slaughter gave him 
a feeling ‘‘as if he had been in hell.” 

A wretched journey, marked by three deliverances from 
impending death in a single day, brought him back to 
Ujiji, “‘a mere ruckle of bones, to find himself destitute.” 
A scoundrelly Mohammedan to whom they had been 
consigned, coveting the goods, had divined on the Koran 
and had obtained the result, to which he had of course 
conspired, that Livingstone was dead; and so once more, 
having struggled to Ujiji, he met dire want instead of the 
expected abundance of supplies. 


THE COMING OF STANLEY 


Could any man’s situation have been more desperate? 
If ever ‘‘man’s extremity’’ proved to be ‘‘God’s oppor- 
tunity,’ surely it was here. As Livingstone came up from 
the west another white man was approaching from the east. 
Five days after he had dragged himself, half-dead, into 
Ujiji, a large caravan appeared, and the sight of it created 
an extraordinary excitement. One of Livingstone’s men 
ran to him and shouted that an Englishman was coming, 


184 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 
and looking out he saw an American flag borne at the head 
of the approaching company. Then going out himself, 
the stranger walked deliberately toward him and said: 
‘“‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume.” 

Two years before, James Gordon Bennett, proprietor of 
the New York Herald, had telegraphed Henry M. Stanley, 
a trusted traveling correspondent of the paper, then in 
Madrid, to ‘‘come to Paris on important business.” 
‘“‘Where do you think Livingstone is?”’ said Bennett. 
Stanley did not know; did not even know whether he was 
alive, as indeed the world did not know. “I think he is 
alive,’ said Bennett, ‘‘and I am going to send you to find 
him.” ‘‘Take what you want, but find Livingstone,’’ were 
the simple, ample terms of his commission. 

And now this trained traveler and correspondent, just 
up out of the great capitals of the world, sat down to talk 
to this simple man out of the forest. There were many 
things to tell. Livingstone had been two full years without 
any tidings from Europe. Stanley was the only white 
man with whom he had talked for six years. These were 
the things that Stanley had to tell Livingstone: Queen 
Victoria’s government had voted him $5,000 for supplies; 
his constant friend, Lord Clarendon, was dead; General 
Grant had been elected President of the United States; 
the Atlantic cables had been successfully laid; the French 
Empire had gone down before the genius of Bismarck at 
Sedan. And more wonderful still were the things that 
Livingstone had to tell Stanley. ‘‘His lips gave me the 
details; lips that never lie,’ said Stanley. But Stanley 
confessed he could not tell it. All the while he talked to 
Livingstone his notebook was in his pocket. Trained to 
his work as he was, frequenter of the world’s capitals as 
he was, this man out of his loneliness, and out of as deep 
solitudes as the human spirit ever knew, mastered him, and 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 185 
he forgot to be a reporter, and sat down for once to the high 
employment of “‘just being a man.’’ I think it is the highest 
of all the unconscious tributes ever paid to Livingstone. 

What would Livingstone do now? One thing was fixed 
and certain from the beginning: he would not go home with 
Stanley. Stanley stayed for four months, and they trav- 
eled together as far as Unyanyembe, and there was a 
pathetic parting. Stanley was to arrange at the coast for 
another trip into the interior, and Livingstone waited some 
time on these arrangements. 


A Hut In ILALA 


In January, 1873, he was again far away in the west, 
near Lake Bangweolo, drenched with the incessant rains, 
numbed by the unnatural cold of the climate, hunger 
gnawing his vitals away, and sickness, insatiate, preying 
upon his wasted frame. It did not take long, in such a 
situation, for the strength gained on Stanley’s supplies to 
become but a distant memory. His path lay across flooded 
rivers, the old dangers and difficulties encompassed him 
on every side, and his sufferings were beyond all previous 
example. His last birthday found him in much the same 
circumstances. In the beginning of April the bleeding 
from the bowels, from which he had so seriously suffered, 
grew worse, and his weakness was pitiful. Still he longs 
for strength to finish his work; and still the Sunday serv- 
ices are held. He becomes too weak even to ride, and a 
kitanda, a rude kind of stretcher, has to be made for carry- 
ing him. 

The twenty-ninth of April was the last day of his travels. 
He directed Susi to take down the side of the hut that the 
kitanda, which could not enter by the door, might be 
brought to his bed; for he could not walk. They came to 
the crossing of a river, and moved on through swamps and 


186 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


marshes—Livingstone begging them when they came to a 
good piece of ground to lay him down to rest—until at last 
they reached Chitambo’s villagein Ilala. Here they sheltered 
him under the eaves of a house from the drizzling rain while 
they built a hut. He was laid on a rough bed for the night, 
and lay undisturbed the next day. His people were in awe 
and very anxious. The earlier and middle part of the next 
night passed quietly, save for a call or two from the suf- 
ferer; but at four in the morning the boy who lay inside 
his door to keep watch called in alarm for Susi. By the 
candle still burning, fit light for the humble hut, they saw 
him kneeling at the side of his bed, his face buried in his 
hands on the pillow. They were hushed and reverent, lest 
they should disturb him at his prayers. While they waited 
it was as if the silence of the mighty shadow had taken a 
tongue to tell them that he was dead. Did ever prayer 
have a better right to go up from this earth into the ears 
of God than that which those pitying lips, touched already 
by the chill of death, poured out amidst heathen darkness 
by the rude bedside in Ilala? If angels had built the altar, 
and if archangels had stood as priests to minister beside 
it, there could not have been a nobler sacrifice than this. 
‘‘Tebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof 
sufficient for a burnt offering,’ but this is ‘‘a sacrifice ac- 
ceptable, well-pleasing to God.”’ In that deep and solitary 
interior where he died, David Livingstone erected an altar 
devoted to Africa’s redemption, and gave himself a willing 
victim into the hands of God. He was touched with:the 
feeling of Africa’s infirmities; and he was obedient unto 
death. 

‘He had passed away on the farthest of all his journeys, 
and without a single attendant.’’ There’were about him 
only the few black people whom he had gathered out of the 
wilderness. They carried his body down to the sea, fifteen 


aa 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 187 


hundred miles distant—Susi and Chuma, his old attend- 
ants, at their head. It was a task of tremendous difficulty. 
The very body was an occasion of superstitious dread and 
offense to the tribes about them and on the way whither 
their steps would tend. And yet, though they could but 
dimly have known him, the God of Livingstone girded 
them for the undertaking. Fourteen days the body was 
dried in the sun, the delicate inward parts having been 
removed, and preparations were made for the long and 
tedious march to Zanzibar. The heart was buried under 
a great tree in Ilala—a quiet and peaceful place in which to 
rest in the bosom of the continent for which it had so often 
ached. Once they had to pretend to turn back upon their 
journey as if to bury the body, in order to get through a 
hostile village. Nine months after Livingstone’s death they 
reached the coast and delivered their charge into English 
hands. In England the body was identified by the arm the 
lion had broken. Sir William Fergusson, the noted surgeon, 
was ‘‘as positive as to the identification of these remains 
as that there has been among us in modern times one of 
the greatest men of the human race.”’ 


A HoME IN THE ABBEY 


On Saturday, April 18, 1874, he was buried in West- 
minster Abbey. Probably he would not have wished to 
have itso. Once in a deep African forest he had come upon 
a lonely grave, and said he would wish such a last resting 
place for himself. But the Abbey and fellowship with the 
great dead of the earth were his due. 


Open the Abbey doors and bear him in 

To sleep with king and statesman, chief and sage, 
The missionary, come of weaver kin, 

But great by work that brooks no lower wage. 


188 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


Dr. John Henry Jowett, the great preacher whose spirit 
follows so hard after the spirit of Livingstone, tells us that 
when he went as a special guest to attend the coronation 
of King George in Westminster Abbey, his mind, amid all 
the pomp and glitter of royal circumstance, ‘‘left all the 
impressive splendor about him and traveled to that quiet 
spot where lie the ashes of David Livingstone.”’ 


His PRIESTLIKE TASK 


His body was taken to England, but redeemed Africa 
shall yet be his monument. That lonely death in the hut 
in Ilala made its appeal to the world. That wasted body 
brought back out of the heart of Africa, in which Afri- 
can fevers had kindled their torturing fires, upon which 
African suns had poured their pitiless heat, which 
African rivers had laved with their swelling floods, 
upon which African rains had poured out their drenching 
torrents, and through which African horrors and darkness 
had sent a thousand chills—that worn-out body, victim at 
last to the terrors which had long threatened it, made its 
mute appeal to the world. It was that mystery of muteness 
which speaks with more eloquence than any voice. We 
may well say with Dr. Blaikie that the statesman heard 
that appeal, and statecraft began to acknowledge a brother- 
hood as broad as mankind. The merchant heard it, and 
the currents of commerce heaved with a purer tide, as 
though the moving waters were 


At their priest-like task 
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores. 


The explorer heard it, and the opening up of a new country 
to the sympathies of Christendom was raised to the rank 
of a noble and a proper missionary task. The missionary 
heard it, and girt his loins about him for a plunge into the 


PUbril AND PASTORATE 189 


deeper darkness and depravity of the heathenism of the 
world. The Christian world heard it, and there were deep 
resolves—as though in a silent parliament of man—that 
Livingstone’s work should not die. 


To lift the somber fringes of the night, 

To open lands long darkened to the light, 

To heal grim wounds, to give the blind new sight, 
Right mightily he wrought. 


Such a life is a hostage God gives to his Church that Chris- 
tianity cannot fail in the earth. The dust to which his 
heart has withered away, in the midst of the aboriginal 
dust of the African continent, shall not hear the judgment 
trumpet till redemption’s work is done. 


He climbed the steep ascent of heaven, 
Through peril, toil, and pain; 

O God, to us may grace be given 
To follow in his train: 


VIII 


FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON 
(1816-1853) 


A RELUCTANT AND REGRETFUL ENTRANCE INTO THE 
MINISTRY 


NoNE who has any tolerable appreciation of the motive 
and aim of Christian preaching will doubt that Frederick 
W. Robertson was called to this ministry. Nevertheless, 
his own inclination ran quite to the contrary. His father 
was a captain in the Royal Artillery. His grandfather, 
Colonel Robertson, in whose house in London he was born 
on February 3, 1816, won distinction and received a wound 
in military service. Three of his brothers entered the army, 
and the whole bent of his own early life was in the same 
direction. He spent the first five years of his life at Leith 
Fort, near Edinburgh, and breathed a military atmosphere 
before he could know what it meant, though not before it 
could have some influence in the shaping of his desires. 
His father then retired on half pay in order to devote his 
time to the education of his children. This particular 
child he taught himself for four years and carefully guided 
his instruction afterwards, having sent him first to the 
grammar school of the town of Beverly in Yorkshire, 
whither he had moved on leaving Leith. The family spent 
a year at Tours, in France, where Frederick had an English 
tutor in the classics and laid the foundations of an accurate 
knowledge of the French language. When he was nearly 
sixteen years old his father returned to England and placed 
him in a private school in Edinburgh. At the end of a 
session spent in this school he attended the various classes 
at the University of Edinburgh under the direction of a 
special instructor. 

(190) 


PRINCES OF THE PULPIT 191 


He was able to look with grateful recollections and warm 
appreciation back to his childhood, counting it as an es- 
pecial mercy from God that his parents had shielded him 
from evil influences and had given him a home which he 
still could honor when maturity had cast a revealing light 
upon its days and its deeds. His mother said she never 
knew him to tell a lie. In the childhood of his life, at least, 
there was more of light than of shadow, more of love than 
of calumny. “Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, 
thou shalt not escape calumny.” The bitterness of this 
truth he had to taste in later life without any alleviating 
potion save the indefeasible sense of his own soul’s in- 
tegrity; but his childhood at least was secure in the radiance 
of its memories. He describes himself in boyhood as “‘iron 
in strength, broad and stout.’’ Perhaps the secret facts of 
his constitution did not even at this time warrant so op- 
timistic a deduction, but it was worth something to believe 
it anyway. Already he had begun to display a marked 
self-mistrust and an intense sensitiveness to his own least 
fault. ae 

He took very high rank in his classes in the Edinburgh 
Academy, and early developed a habit of studying ex- 
haustively subjects to which he applied himself. His 
memory was so retentive that in later life he could recall 
with ease page after page of books which he had not read 
since his boyhood. 

But in nothing else was he so eager as in his inclination 
to a military life. His early life at Leith had made an in- 
effaceable impression upon him. All the seeds of military 
desire and ambition which had ever fallen into his soul 
lodged there and germinated there. ‘“‘I was rocked and 
cradled,” he says, ‘“‘to the roar of artillery, and the very 
name of such things sounds to me like home. A review, 
suggesting the conception of a real battle, impresses me 


192 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAS 


to tears; I cannot see a regiment maneuver, nor artillery 
in motion, without a choking sensation.’’ At the time of 
his leaving Edinburgh his desire to enter the army had be- 
come a fixed purpose. But his discerning father had read 
more deeply into his character and proposed that he should 
enter the ministry. His unhesitating answer was: ‘‘Any- 
thing but that; I am not fit for it.”’ 

Trial was made for a year in the office of a solicitor wheth- 
er he might make his way into the practice of law; but 
with his utter lack of taste for a lawyer’ life the attempt 
palled upon him, and what with his sedentary habits be- 
sides, his health was very unfavorably affected. His 
father was now disposed to allow him to follow what 
seemed to be the insuperable bent of his nature, and ap- 
plication was made for a military commission. He devoted 
himself at once to military preparation, training himself 
as a horseman, in shooting, and as a draughtsman. Two 
years were occupied in these pursuits without any report 
from his application. His father, thinking that the ap- 
plication had been forgotten, or that at any rate it would 
come to naught, again proposed to him that he should enter 
the Church, pointing out to him at the same time the 
seriousness of the temptations of a soldier’s life. But he 
thought he could be “the Cornelius of his regiment,” 
again refused, and continued his preparation for military 
service. At the same time, strange as it may seem, he 
kept up his reading in religious and theological subjects. 
There seems hardly to be any doubt that there were fluc- 
tuations in his mind between the army and the Church 
which have never been disclosed. There must be a Provi- 
dence which seeks to direct our lives, ‘“‘rough hew them how 
we will.’’ Robertson’s escape from a soldier’s life on which 
his heart was so all but inescapably set seems almost too 
narrow to be comfortable to one who is interested in his 


Peerlio AND PASTORATE 193 


remarkable career as a preacher. He met, ere the tide of 
circumstance had borne him too far beyond the reach of 
better purpose, a Mr. Davies with whom a close and in- 
fluential friendship was formed, who coveted his service 
for the Christian ministry, and sought to draw him into it. 
Robertson replied to the endeavor to dissuade him from 
entering the army “‘that the matter had been already set- 
tled, that application had been made long ago, and in- 
terest employed to obtain a commission.’’ He was careful 
also to say: “‘I do not become a soldier to Win laurels; my 
object is to do good.”” He would only give a promise to 
allow the whole matter to be reconsidered. Then again 
his father said to him: “I think you had better reconsider 
your plans and enter the Church.’’ But again he an- 
swered: “No, never!’’ The next day he met another 
minister, Mr. Daly, at the house of the same neighbor 
where he had first met Mr. Davies, and again was asked 
what seemed to him the singular question as to “‘whether 
it were definitely settled that he should go into the army.” 
After further conversation with Mr. Daly, who knew noth- 
ing of what had gone just before, Robertson asked: “‘ What 
would you advise me to do?” Mr. Daly, who had un- 
knowingly joined Davies and_his father in wishing to see 
him go into the Church, replied: ‘‘Do as your father likes, 
and pray God to direct your father aright.’ Other friends 
were urging the same course upon him. This conspiracy 
of circumstance acquired additional cumulative effect from 
the fact that all these things occurred within the brief space 
of three weeks of time. Robertson at length spoke to his 
father and ‘‘left the final decision in his hands.’’ Though 
his father had so long desired to see him go into the ministry, 
he now gave the matter further and anxious consideration 
and determined at length to send him up at once to Oxford. 


With some difficulty an opening was found in Brazenose 
13 . 


een 


194 PRINCES OF .THE CHRISTIAR 


College, and on May 4, 1837, he was examined and matricu- 
lated to become a resident in October. He was now twen- 
ty-one years of age. 

Five days after his admission to Oxford he received notice 
of an offer of a cavalry commission, with an option of ex- 
change to troops just setting out for India, the very direc- 
tion in which his mind had been turned. A difference of 
three weeks of time in its arrival would in all probability 
have set it up as a permanent barrier to his entrance into 
the ministry. In a sermon in after years in which he was 
giving expression to his belief that God’s providence 
shapes our lives, he said: “If I had not met a certain person, 
! should not have changed my profession; if I had not 
known a certain lady I should not probably have met this 
person; if that lady had not had a delicate daughter who 
was disturbed by the barking of my dog, I should not have 
met that lady; if my dog had not barked that night, I 
should now have been in the dragoons or fertilizing the 
soil of India.”’ 

He was deeply submissive to the will of God and suf- 
fered himself, even if we may suppose that he was tempted 
to do so, to entertain no positive regret that he had entered 
the ministry. Still there was a lifelong regret, secret, 
though at times all but expressed, that he had been denied 
the gratification of a career as a soldier. His biographer, 
the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, says that ‘‘all his life long 
he was a soldier at heart.’’ But all the best that he aimed 
to be as a soldier he became as a minister of Jesus Christ. 
The very effort to subdue the flame of soldierly aspiration 
could but kindle in him a more ardent flame for service in 
a nobler warfare. ‘‘The strength of character which made 
him feel so keenly the surrender of one profession made 
him adopt another with fervor.” 

The Tractarian Movement, under the leadership of John 


Peer b AND PASTORATE 195 


Henry Newman, was in the full tide of its influence while 
Robertson was at Oxford. He was deeply impressed by 
Newman’s preaching, but could not be won over to sym- 
pathy with the movement. The clash of religious con- 
troversy convinced him of the necessity of a deeper and 
more accurate acquaintance with the Bible. While in the 
University he learned by heart the New Testament, both 
in English and in Greek. This he accomplished while 
dressing in the morning, taking a certain number of verses 
each day, going thus twice over the English and once and a 
half over the Greek version. He studied Plato, Aristotle, 
and Jonathan Edwards until these had passed like the 
“iron atoms of the blood into his mental constitution.” 
Bishop Butler, both in his sermons and in the “ Analogy,” 
he seems also completely to have mastered. Among the 
poets he seems chiefly to have read Tennyson and Dante. 
There are indications that he read the latter every day. 
The entire “Inferno’’ he seems to have committed to 
memory. Wordsworth also acquired a permanent and 
most wholesome ascendancy over his mind. His university 
life, of course, did not form the end, but only the beginning, 
of most of these studies. His admiration for great and 
heroic qualities in human character was early awakened and 
continuously active, and in proportion as he was capable 
of admiration for that which was noble in others did he 
possess the power to become noble himself. 

He participated freely in the exercises of the Oxford de- 
bating union, but displayed at this time only argumenta- 
tive and not oratorical powers. He was drawn into much 
discursive reading, in part through the influence of the 
Tractarian controversy as over against the more concen- 
trated reading of the college curriculum, which had for its 
design not only the more effective training of the mind, but 
also the possible winning of honors. This he afterwards 


196 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


very much regretted, not because of the honors he did not 
win, but because of the lost discipline of the mind. Ten 
or twelve years after he left the University he said: “‘I now 
feel that I was utterly, mournfully, irreparably wrong. I 
would now give £200 a year to have read on a bad plan, 
chosen for me, but steadily.”’ 

All through his youth he preserved without contamina- 
tion through any coarse contact or indulgence that fine 
chastity of spirit which ultimately fixed chastity upon him 
as one of the finest attributes of his character. 


A PAINFUL STRUGGLE FOR A POSITION IN THE MINISTRY 


Position in the ministry, so far as externalities go, Robert- 
son never had. He preached butva little more than thirteen 
years, and during this time he had only four Churches— 
Winchester, two years; Cheltenham, five years; Oxford, 
three months; Brighton, six years; and in every one of 
these he was in but a subordinate or inferior position. He 
might have had preferment in the Church if he had been 
more plastic in the hands of those who had the preferment 
to bestow, as was intimated in the matter of his attitude 
on the Sabbath; but that it was not given him to be. The 
Lord Chancellor might give him many things, a bishopric 
or what not, but one thing he could not give him, and that 
was peace of conscience. And there he stood as tireless in 
his devotion to high principle as the multitudinous seas 
were tireless in their ceaseless task of encompassing the 
beaches of Brighton. Upon the pricelessness of peace of 
conscience to himself he insisted with a most impracticable 
persistence. He had the swift and unerring insight to dis- 
cern that a man might lose the power to be a bishop in the 
act of gaining the office. ‘‘They have bowed down to Satan 
to win the kingdom, and therefore the kingdom is value- 
less.’ He would not sacrifice the interiorities of his life 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 197 


in order to save the exteriorities. It would seem all too 
often to be the fate of the high and prophet-toned men 
to be bound up in the bundle of the affairs of life with the 
servile or inferior sort and to be in subjection under them. 
Notwithstanding these seeming untoward eventualities, 
the righteous have their reward. Who knows now without 
going to the pains to look it up so much as what the name 
of Robertson’s spiteful vicar at Brighton was? 

When he leaves the University and embarks upon the 
wider stages of his ministry there is still a tone of sadness 
and regret which clings to all his serious action. His 
biography, Hoppin says, “‘is a sad book to read.’’ Still in 
this very shrinking on the threshold of a great task, a 
shrinking which even later he could never entirely shake 
off, we may undoubtedly find some of the finest elements 
of his fitness to be just what he felt he could not be. The 
man who can thus measure the greatness of the task to 
which he is called and can at the same time sound the depths 
and search out the secrets of his own mind and conscience 
to know how unfit he is, is just the man who in the final 
test of the issues of life will force himself up in mind and 
character to the greatness of his task. There is recorded 
here too the first chapter in the history of that capacity 
for suffering through which Robertson entered into the 
greatness of his achievement as a Christian preacher. 
What he suffered is as nearly as could be the measure of 
what he achieved. Had he suffered less, he would have 
preached Christ less effectively. Out of the depths of an 
inexpressible loneliness of soul there started fountains of 
tears cleansing and sacrificial in their flow, and the tears of 
other men were swallowed up in their flood. 

Upon the whole it cannot be said that Robertson’s time 
at Winchester made any appreciable contribution to either 
the deepening or expansion of his character. Brooke thinks 


198 PRINCES OF THE CHRIST EAS 


bc 


that his sermons here were ‘“‘startlingly inferior’’ to those 
produced at Brighton. His secluded and severe regimen 
of life impaired his health; and acting under medical advice 
he relinquished his charge and traveled abroad, having 
first passed his examination for priest’s orders. In the 
retrospect of his ministry at Winchester he was haunted 
by a disheartening sense of failure which settled upon him 
as one of the plagues of his life. 

In his travels on the Continent he came into contact 
with the illustrious Ceasar Malan, who after several in- 
timate interviews said to him: ‘‘My dear brother, you will 
have a sad life, a sad ministry.”’ It was on this adventure 
also that he met and married Helen Denys, a daughter of a 
distinguished English family sojourning for a while in 
Geneva. 

In the summer of 1842 he became curate at Cheltenham. 
His rector was the Rev. Archibald Boyd, who proved him- 
self to be.a generous and valued friend. For this reason 
among others Robertson was more advantageously situated 
than hitherto had been his lot. But he held extreme views 
of propriety as applied to ministerial conduct and refrained 
from recreations which the state both of his mind and his 
body really required. He sorely needed human sympathy, 
and yet was largely denied it, not so much because others 
were unwilling that he should have it as that he himself 
did not know how to receive it. Without so much as know- 
ing that he did it, he posted a notice that there was ‘‘No 
admission.”’ His attitude toward others was reflected upon 
himself as if it were their own toward him, and yet he did 
not know it. “‘Sad and dispirited’’ was his comment upon 
himself as he contemplated the results of his ministry at 
Cheltenham. Nevertheless, he grew. He read Carlyle, 
and did not slacken in his devotion to Tennyson and Dante. 
He kept himself usefully and intelligently informed on 


PULCPID AND. PASTORATE 199 


questions of the day, and the effect of this was reflected 
in hissermons. His method of sermon preparation changed, 
and ‘his sermons changed in character. Instead of writing 
them out in one morning as he had done at Winchester, 
he now studied for them on Thursday and Friday and 
wrote them on Saturday. In respect of this matter also 
Mr. Boyd exercised a wholesome influence upon him. 

It was while at Cheltenham that he reacted rather vi- 
olently from what he conceived to be the excesses of the 
evangelicalism in which he had been brought up. This 
had been the atmosphere of his home and the substance of 
his early training, and from it he could not break wholly 
away, as, indeed, from its essential content, he would not 
wish to do. But this section of the Church of England had 
retrograded as he thought from a sound and genuine piety 
into a pietistic narrowness, and from sincere and genuinely 
Christian devotion into moral unreality, so that their pro- 
fession outran their experience, and his soul revolted. To 
allow himself to be any longer reckoned among them he 
considered would place him in a false position. Whatever 
harbor he may have had within any group in the Church 
he now lost. He occupied a singularly isolated position, 
being neither High Church, Broad Church, nor Evan- 
gelical in the full sense in which either term described a 
class. ‘“‘Opposed to the High Church movement,” says 
Garvie, “in revolt against the narrow evangelicalism in 
which he had been brought up, too ardently positive in his 
own faith in Christ to be at home among Broad Church- 
men, he stood alone.” 

His health again became seriously affected, and he started 
for the Continent in another effort to restore his physical 
strength and balance, in September, 1846. Leaving Chel- 
tenham he entered the Tyrol and wandered there alone. 
Here he had a lone struggle of the soul comparable to that 


200 PRINCES OF THE CHRISPiAm® 


which he so eloquently describes in his sermon on ‘‘ Jacob's 
Wrestling.’’ Out of the stern struggles of his own soul he 
learned the secret of Jacob’s wrestling. In that great ser- 
mon given as a confirmation address about three years 
after this crisis in the Tyrol he says: “It was one of those 
moments in existence when a crisis is before us, to which 
great and pregnant issues are linked—when all has been 
done that foresight can devise, and, the hour of action being 
past, the instant of reaction has come. Then the soul is 
left passive and helpless, gazing face to face upon the an- 
ticipated and dreadful moment which is slowly moving on. 
It is in these hours that, having gone through in imagina- 
tion the whole circle of resources, and found them nothing, 
and ourselves powerless, as in the hands of a destiny, 
there comes a strange and nameless dread, a horrible feel- 
ing of insecurity, which gives the consciousness of a want, 
and forces us to feel out into the abyss for something that 
is mightier than flesh and blood to lean upon... . And this 
is our struggle—the struggle. Let any true man go down 
into the depths of his own being, and answer us—what is 
the cry that comes from the most real part of his nature? 
Is it the cry for daily bread? Jacob had asked for that in 
his first communing with God—preservation, safety. Is 
it even this—to be forgiven our sins? Jacob had a sin 
to be forgiven, and in that most solemn moment of his 
existence he did not say a syllable about it. Or is it this— 
‘Hallowed be thy name’? No, my brethren. Out of our 
frail and yet sublime humanity, the demand that rises in 
the earthlier hours of our religion may be this—Save my 
soul; but in the most unearthly moments it is this—‘ Tell me 
thy Name.’ We move through a world of mystery, and 
the deepest question is, What is the being that is ever 
near, sometimes felt, never seen; that which has haunted 
us from childhood with a dream of something surpassingly 


PULPIT AND: PASTORATE 201 


fair, which has never yet been realized; that which sweeps 
through the soul at times as a desolation, like the blast 
from the wings of the Angel of Death, leaving us stricken 
and silent in our loneliness; that which has touched us in 
our tenderest point, and the flesh has quivered with agony, 
and our mortal affections have shriveled up with pain; 
that which comes to us in aspirations of nobleness and con- 
ceptions of superhuman excellence? Shall we say It or He? 
Whatisit? Whois He? Those anticipations of Immortality 
and God—what are they? Are they the mere throbbings of my 
own heart, heard and mistaken for a living something beside 
me? Are they the sound of my own wishes, echoing through 
the vast void of nothingness? or shall I call them God, 
Father, Spirit, Love? A living Being within me or outside 
me? Tellme Thy Name, thou awful mystery of Loveliness! 
This is the struggle of all earnest life... . The effect of this 
revelation was to change Jacob’s character. His name was 
changed from Jacob to Israel, because himself was an al- 
tered man. Hitherto there had been something subtle in 
his character—a certain cunning and craft—a want of 
breadth, as if he had no firm footing upon reality. The 
forgiveness of God twenty years before had not altered 
this. He remained Jacob, the subtle supplanter still. For, 
indeed, a man whose religion is chiefly the sense of forgive- 
ness does not thereby rise into integrity or firmness of 
character—a certain tenderness of character may very 
easily go along with a great deal of subtlety. Jacob was 
tender and devout, and grateful for God’s pardon, and 
only half honest still. But this half insincere man is 
brought into contact with the awful God, and his subtlety 
falls from him. He becomes real at once. Every insincere 
habit of mind shrivels in the face of God. One clear, true 
glance into the depths of Being, and the whole man is al- 
tered. The name changes because the character is changed. 


202 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


No longer Jacob, The Supplanter, but Israel, The Prince of 
God—the champion of the Lord, who had fought with 
God and conquered; and who, henceforth, will fight for 
God, and be his true, loyal soldier: a larger, more unselfish 
name—a larger and more unselfish man—honest and true 
at last. No man becomes honest till he has got face to 
face with God. There is a certain insincerity about us all 
—a something dramatic. One of those dreadful moments 
which throw us upon ourselves, and strip off the hollowness 
of our outside show, must come before the insincere is true.” 

This is speech in the language of experience wherein all 
men were born, and wherein in a preéminent degree the 
soul of Frederick W. Robertson was nurtured. This is the 
mystic sign by which all wrestlers with God know each 
other. Across the chasm of the centuries they call to each 
other, and they are one in all ages. Even more poignantly 
autobiographical and self-revealing is the following passage 
from an address to workingmen of Brighton delivered when 
the crisis in the Tyrolese solitudes had still further deepened 
its significance in his soul: “‘It is an awful moment when the 
soul begins to feel that the props on which it has blindly 
rested so long are, many of them, rotten, and begins to 
suspect them all; when it begins to feel the nothingness of 
many of the traditionary opinions which have been re- 
ceived with implicit confidence, and in that horrible in- 
security begins also to doubt whether there be anything to 
believe at all. It is an awful hour—let him who has passed 
through it say how awful—when this life has lost its mean- 
ing, and seems shriveled into a span; when the grave ap- 
pears to be the end of all, human goodness nothing but a 
name, and the sky above this universe a dead expanse, 
black with the void from which God himself has disap- 
peared. In that fearful loneliness of spirit, when those 
who should have been his friends and counselors only 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 203 


frown upon his misgivings, and profanely bid him stifle 
doubts which, for aught he knows, may arise trom the 
fountain of truth itself; to extinguish, as a glare from hell, 
that which, for aught he knows, may be light from heaven, 
and everything seems wrapped in hideous uncertainty, 
I know but one way in which a man may come forth from 
his agony scathless; it is by holding fast to those things 
which are certain still—the grand, simple landmarks of 
morality. In the darkest hour through which a human 
soul can pass, whatever else is doubtful, this at least is 
certain. If there be no God and no future state, yet even 
then it is better to be generous than selfish, better to be 
chaste than licentious, better to be true than false, better 
to be brave than to be a coward. Blessed beyond all 
earthly blessing is the man who, in the tempestuous dark- 
ness of his soul, has dared to hold fast to these venerable 
landmarks. Thrice blessed is he who—when all is drear 
and cheerless within and without, when his teachers ter- 
rify him, and his friends shrink from him-—has obstinately 
clung to moral good; thrice blessed, because his night shall 
pass into clear, bright day. I appeal to the recollection of 
any man who has passed through that hour of agony, and 
stood upon the rock at last, the surges stilled below him, 
and the last cloud drifted from the sky above, with a faith, 
and hope, and trust no longer traditional, but of hisown—a 
trust which neither earth nor hell shall shake thenceforth for- 
ever.’ Through contests such as these did he win the clearer 
knowledge of God and the secret of a sure trust in him. 
Before returning to Cheltenham he had given up the 
curacy of the Church there and wanted employment. He 
wrote to Bishop Wilberforce and stated his case with the 
result that he was offered the weak and struggling Church 
at St. Ebbe’s at Oxford. Knowing the bishop’s views on 
the subject, he hesitated to accept without telling him that 


204 PRINCES OF THE: CHRISEIAw 


he could not preach the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. 
The bishop replied that he allowed rather large latitude 
to his clergy and asked to hear Robertson state his position. 
When this had been done he said: ‘‘ Well, Mr. Robertson, 
you have well maintained your position, and I renew my 
offer.’ The offer was immediately accepted. 

Looking backward to Cheltenham and forward to St. 
Ebbe’s, he wrote to a friend: “‘I have lately, as I told you, 
given up Christ Church here with feelings of inexpressible 
pain. A ministry of twilight, at the best, and difficulty, 
has closed. Every effort has been crowned with the most 
signal failure, and I shrink sometimes almost in torture 
from the idea of beginning work again with the possibility 
of five such years once more before me. This is not an 
encouraging tone of mind to begin a ministry with, so beset 
with difficulties as St. Ebbe’s. However, as I certainly 
have no earthly inducement to take it, perhaps the work 
may be blest, even though mine.’’ This unfortunately 
became his characteristic mood. How far, being constitut- 
ed as he was, he could have ordered otherwise no man can 
say. That he fought his moods we very well know. 

After two months at Oxford he was offered Trinity 
Chapel, Brighton, and declined, thinking it to be his duty 
to stay where he was; and also doubting whether he could 
be sure of his motive in leaving a stipend of £115 for one 
of £300. But Brighton pressed its claims, and his bishop 
when consulted advised him to go. 


BUILDING A WORLD PULPIT AT BRIGHTON 


Anwoth, and Kidderminster, and Eversley, and Brighton 
have been the Nazareths out of which have come some of 
the world’s greatest and most permanent ministries. 
Brighton would hardly be called the least likely of them 
all, but had a prospector gone out to find the place where 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 205 


a great English pulpit was to be built in the nineteenth 
century he probably would not have surveyed Brighton. 
And yet it was there “in a shabby little chapel holding 
some five hundred people” that such a pulpit was built. 
Brighton was a popular seaside resort and had its own 
fashions, foibles, and follies, industrial, social, intellectual, 
and religious. But it is not out of mere places that pulpits 
are built. In this place, and in this little chapel, insignifi- 
cant in its appointments though it was, Robertson exercised 
a ministry which has sent out its lines into all the earth, 
and whose voice has been heard to the ends of the world. 

The misgiving which all his life shadowed his soul fol- 
lowed him in its darkest hues to Brighton. He lived with 
a presentiment that his life was to be short. He thought 
his work would kill him. His preaching at Brighton quick- 
ly attracted attention, not a little of it of a critical sort. 
He was anonymously accused to the bishop of the diocese 
of preaching on political subjects in a way to provoke un- 
rest among workingmen. There was a general feeling of 
disturbance in the air,—this was in 1848—an importation 
to England from the Continent, more particularly from 
France. Robertson had preached a series of expository 
sermons from the first book of Samuel which furnished the 
ground of the complaint against him. But if he had only 
expounded the plain principles of the Scriptures as he 
found them and they had been discovered to be applicable 
to human government and the relation of those who gov- 
erned and those who were the subjects of the government, 
how was he to be blamed? In that case, as it seemed to 
him, the complaint lay not against him, but against the 
Scriptures. In a letter to the bishop he stoutly defended 
his course: “I spoke of the faults of those above me, and 
they complain that they should not be so taught in the 
presence of their servants and inferiors. ... I feel that, in 


206 PRINCES” OF “THE? CHRIS GEA 


dealing with God’s truth, a minister of Christ is clear from 
the charge of presumption if he speaks strongly, yet af- 
fectionately, of evils or faults in his social superiors. It 
brings no pleasure with it. It makes him personal enemies. 
It is ruin to his worldly interests; and worse than all to a 
sensitive heart, it makes coldness where there was cor- 
diality. Yet through life I am ready to bear this, if need 
be. An earnest searching ministry among the rich is very, 
very saddening work.”’ 

A Workingman’s Institute was established in Brighton, 
and Robertson had given his aid to the movement. He 
was asked to make the address at its opening. He became 
more and more involved in the clash of interests between 
the rich and the poor. He had been bred in the tastes of 
the aristocracy, but his principles were with the democracy. 
He himself thought ‘‘this discord in him marred his use- 
fulness.’ It is no doubt truer to the facts to think other- 
wise; for what he conceived to be a discord only drew his 
soul out to finer issues. At any rate he went with his prin- 
ciples and not with his tastes. 

Even he is aware that he has come to better things in 
Brighton. But he begins to suffer extreme exhaustion after 
effort. Sunday night, Monday, and all Tuesday were 
“days of wretched exhaustion—not despondency, but 
actual nervous pain.” He finds himself driven in upon the 
deepest sources of spiritual comfort: ‘‘My experience is 
closing into this, that I turn with disgust from everything 
to Christ. I think I get glimpses into his mind, and I am 
sure that I love him more and more... . A sublime feeling 
of a Presence comes upon me at times, which makes inward 
solitariness a trifle to talk about.” | 

That a man so tensely strung to the note of self-conscious- 
ness as Robertson was should ever be able to shake himself 
free of his bondage is a noble tribute to his devotion to the 


PUEriIT AND PASTORATE 207 


highest things whether within or without himself. But in 
public speech it was so. In his pulpit his haunting self- 
hood did not intrude. “His self-consciousness vanished. 
He did not choose his words or think about his thoughts. 
He not only possessed, but was possessed by his idea; and 
when all was over, and the reaction came, he had forgotten, 
like a dream, words, illustrations, almost everything.” 
He laid the power of his resolute will upon his own passion 
and brought it under a sure control. His complete mastery 
over himself gave him the mastery over others. By the 
measure of the restraint which he laid upon his own emo- 
tions he was able to stir the emotions of others. Perhaps 
nothing else quite so subdues a public audience as the 
spectacle in a speaker of supreme self-command. Nothing 
else so gives him a title to command others as a wise self- 
command. But this effort at self-mastery was to Robert- 
son terribly self-consuming.. ‘‘He spoke,’ says Brooke, 
‘under tremendous excitement, but it was excitement 
reined in by will. He held in his hand, when he began his 
sermon, a small slip of paper, with a few notes upon it. 
He referred to it now and then; but before ten minutes had 
gone by, it was crushed to uselessness in his grasp; for he 
knit his fingers together over it, as he knit his words over 
his thought. His gesture was subdued: sometimes a slow 
motion of his hand upwards; sometimes bending forward, 
his hand drooping over the pulpit; sometimes erecting him- 
self to his full height with a sudden motion, as if upraised 
by the power of the thought he spoke. His voice—a 
musical, low, clear, penetrative voice—seldom rose; and 
when it did, it was in a deep volume of sound, which was 
not loud, but toned like a great bell. It thrilled, also, but 
that was not so much from feeling as from the repression 
of feeling. ... Brain and heart were on fire. He was being 
self-consumed.” 


208 } PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


The Brighton days ran brilliantly, but for him heavily, 
on. The brilliance of his own achievement seems to have 
been entirely concealed from himself. He was never to 
know in this world how nobly he had lived, nor with what 
splendor his pulpit had been crowned. He asked for a 
curate, but was not allowed to have one, his vicar inter- 
vening with an objection based on a previous personal 
difference with Robertson’s nominee. Under the circum- 
stances he declined to propose another. In the meantime 
disease ran on its merciless course, and with the advance 
of the disease there was increased and all but intolerable 
suffering. He himself described his pain as being like 
‘‘stabs in the brain.’’ It was a disease of the brain, and 
the medical practice of the time could afford him no relief. 
What he suffered no one really ever knew. His biographer 
remembers that he saw on the manuscript of one of his 
lectures on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, that on 
‘‘The Thorn in the Flesh,” the mark of a tear. Strange 
record of a tear was that; but the full record of our tears 
is kept in another land. 

He preached his last sermon on Sunday, June 5, 1853, 
and died on the fifteenth of August following, being at the 
time thirty-seven years, six months, and twelve days old. 


LASTING INFLUENCE OF THE MAN AND His MINISTRY 


When Robertson died only one of his sermons had ever 
been printed, that on the death of Queen Adelaide, under 
the title, ‘‘The Israelite’s Grave in a Foreign Land.’ The 
wealth of homiletic material wrapped up in his sermons to 
be discovered when they were printed had not been re- 
motely conceived of, and least of all by Robertson himself. 
His own hands, however, in the form in which we have 
them, had preserved them. He had formed the habit of 
writing them out from memory on the day of their delivery 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE | 209 


for the use of a friend and members of his family. The 
persistence with which he clung to the discharge of a task 
so disagreeable and irksome as this could but have been to 
one of his temperament would seem almost to have had in 
it some unconscious cerebration of what was to come of it. 
And yet so little did he think of what he had done in the 
preservation of this incomparable material that he left 
no direction whatever concerning any disposition to be 
made of it. 

1. The most valuable lesson of his life for the preacher 
must be the inescapable way in which the man himself was 
bound up in the bundle of life with the preacher. In the 
proportion that any man fancies that he can detach his 
manhood from his ministry will both his manhood and 
his ministry deteriorate. In going about to explain the 
unique interest which Robertson has excited and the lasting 
influence which he has exercised upon Christian preaching 
the last word lies here—that he built his pulpit into an 
altar and bound himself to it and consumed himself on it, 
God’s grace sanctifying the gift. Whatever may have been 
the tinge, or taint, if any please to call it so, of reluctance 
and regret which attached to the very temperament of the 
man, there will be none to question that he burnt all of 
himself on the altar he built at the center of his ministry. 
He first disciplined and trained the man and then the 
training of the preacher came easy. The last problem of 
homiletics is the sermon. The first problem is the preacher 
himself, and never a mere matter of method or technique. 
Robertson’s sermons burned like a fire in his brain, every 
one of them, and throbbed in his heart, and ran in his very 
blood. A man may have many opinions and never make a 
preacher. But if he has a few convictions, mixed with the 
moral tissue of the man as Robertson’s were, he has gotten 


fairly into the way of making a preacher. His theology, 
14 7 % 


210 PRINCES (OF DHE, CHRIS TEA 


though he hammered it out himself, never amounted to 
much, either while he lived or since. But he had convictions 
to count, not so much numerically as in their tremendous 
moral force and effect. ‘‘I could not tell you,” he said in 
one of his illuminating letters, “‘my own deep and deepen- 
ing conviction that the truths which I teach are true.” 

Every great preacher has his own Gethsemane, aye, and 
his own Calvary too; and Robertson did not escape his. 
He had gone into his Gethsemane and stained with his 
blood the stones over which his head had bowed. He had 
gone into the solitudes of the Tyrolese mountains and had 
climbed his Calvary and had died to self. He was made 
the captain of their salvation to many through the things 
which he suffered. Sufferers, and doubters, and any who 
carried heavily the strain of life heard him gladly and with 
ereat profit. The very extremity of his suffering, though 
-it was produced in part by his morbid sensitiveness, has 
exercised a profound selective influence upon the minds of 
many, and has made him by preéminence their minister. 
Perhaps no other man ever paid a greater price to be a 
preacher. ‘‘The most valuable book I possess,’ he said, 
‘fis the remembrance of trials at which I repined, but which 
I now find were sent in answer to my prayer to be made a 
preacher.”’ The very bitterness with which he received the 
word gave it a tone of wondrous comfort to others as it 
came forth again from his mouth. ‘“‘It is not so much the 
utterance as the reception of the Word which is the condi- 
tion of its utterance,’ says Dr. R. F. Horton, in “‘Verbum 
Det,” “that makes the great demand upon the man’s en- 
durance and faithfulness.’”’ Perhaps the heights of joy 
and the depths of sorrow and suffering lie closer together 
in the secret monitions of our nature than we are wont to 
think; and he who cannot descend to the one cannot ascend 
to the other. 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE Ad 


“Who would dare the choice, neither or both to know, 
The finest quiver of joy or the agony-thrill of woe? 
Never the exquisite pain, then never the exquisite bliss, 
For the heart that is dull to that can never be strung to this.” 


2. Robertson’s sermons are renowned for the closeness 
of their application of the Bible to the ends of preaching. 
No man could know the Bible as he knew it, and devote 
himself to the continued study of it as he did, never as- 
suming that he sufficiently knew it, and apply such proc- 
esses of the mind to the understanding of it as he did, 
without noteworthy results. He demanded of himself first 
of all that he should know just what the Bible said and 
what it meant as it stood there on the printed page in its 
original historical setting and intent. He felt that in the 
first instance it must be allowed to speak for itself, and its 
content be approached not only without preconceived 
opinions, but with a tractable and sincere desire to know 
the truth. In the next place he committed himself to the 
immitigable task, for he resolutely imposed it on himself, 
of knowing what permanent truth his text enshrined. If 
there were no such truth, then it was not the text he sought. 
And last of all he bent himself to the application of that 
truth to his own time. If the sermons on Samuel bore down 
on the conditions in the midst of which he was called to 
labor, instead of the conditions in the midst of which 
Samual lived, then it was so much the worse for the later 
time. What else shall sermons fit if they do not fit the 
times? It is no use to cut out homiletical garments to 
fit the angels. Let sermons be shaped in secret places, to 
be sure; but let them fit their wearers in public places. 
Every sermon begins with a close and conscientious 
analysis of the text. He digs the ground down to the depths 
and through all the space around until he finds the treasure 
hidden there. It is a work that makes remorseless demand 


212 PRINCES OF “THE: CHRIST IA 


on mind and nerve, and that is why so many preachers 
shirk it. But Robertson was no shirker. He would spend 
the last atom of his strength in doing this work. What 
does this text mean? What did this writer mean to con- 
vey? What does it mean to men to-day? “Nearly every 
one of the one hundred sermons,” says Dr. Frederick Lynch, 
‘‘furnishes about the most thorough analysis of texts to be 


found anywhere in literature.’’ “‘He demonstrates,” says 
Dr. Brastow, ‘‘ the fruitfulness of Biblical study for homiletic 
use. . . . His preaching shows how thoroughly he had 


grasped the homiletic significance and value of the Bible.” 

3. As any master of preaching who exercises a wide in- 
fluence is bound to do, whether consciously or unconscious- 
ly, Robertson was careful of homiletic form and practice. 
He would be instinctively if not otherwise aware that the 
arrangement of the material of a sermon has much to do 
with the effectiveness of its presentation. He had at his 
command both through his natural gifts and through their 
cultivation ‘‘an extraordinary power of expression and ar- 
rangement.’’ Let anyone who cares to do so take his 
matchless sermon on ‘‘The Loneliness of Christ’’ and con- 
sider whether he can add, or remove, or substitute a single 
word, or change a single turn in the expression, or alter the 
arrangement to the advantage of either the expression or 
the arrangement. Introduction, discussion, and conclusion 
are as admirable in conception and execution as-if he had 
fashioned the whole as a model of homiletical instructiom, 
and guidance. : 

He had in a conspicuous degree the gifts which go to the 
making of a topical preacher. Nevertheless, he was a 
textual preacher, and a study of his homiletics brings us 
back again to his Biblical method. The text was his point 
of departure. The process to which he subjected his text 
was so vital that the sermon was a growth and not a struc- 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 213 


ture, or such a structure as is the result of a vital and nota 
mechanical procedure. Thus he secured one of the highest 
ends of preaching wherein it serves as an exposition of the 
Word of God. His lectures on Corinthians are not only 
noble examples of exposition, but it will also be noted 
that they sustain a distinct sermonic form. 

When he had matured his method of preparation as ap- 
plied to the particular sermon in distinction from the gen- 
eral preparation which every effective preacher must 
make, he described it as follows: ‘‘I should say that the 
word ‘extempore’ does not exactly describe the way I 
preach. I first make copious notes; then draw out a form; 
afterwards write copiously, sometimes twice, or thrice, 
the thoughts, to disentangle them, into a connected whole, 
then make a syllabus; and, lastly, a skeleton, which I 
take into the pulpit.”’ Any preacher who reads that and 
compares it with his own method may consult his own 
conscience as to what confession he should make. 

4. He held in well-balanced combination a rare degree of 
courage and tenderness. Scarcely could any man be more 
wholesomely masculine; scarcely could any woman be 
more genuinely tender. He was equally strong in logic 
and in emotion. Strong thought and a deep and pene- 
trating tenderness had equal place in his preaching. He 
could stimulate and instruct the intellect, and he could 
comfort and strengthen the heart. He had the courage to 
take the consequences, and not to count the cost. He 
could not consult for his own preference or safety. He - 
could not trim his sails to the breezes that blew from either 
the popular or the royal will. The Lord Chancellor might 
give him the richest preferment in the land, but must leave 
him still to the care of his own conscience, as he intimated 
in the case of his being desired to moderate his position on 
the Sabbath. He very broadly intimated that the world 


214 PRINCES OF DHE @PULEEIs 


had nothing to give him for which he cared; that he held 
the true thing to be ever the safe thing in the long run; 
and that he could not turn one hair’s-breadth out of his 
own path for royalty itself. He lowered his banner to 
no man. And yet the whole British Cabinet came down 
on one Sunday to Brighton to hear him preach. 

_5. Sinking the shaft of his steadfast purpose through all 

other considerations and past all other depths, he anchored 
at last himself and his ministry in Christ as central both 
in Christian experience and Christian preaching. In these 
great depths he found the only calm he ever had; and ‘it 
is because of this experience that Robertson became the 
most comprehensive, forceful, and persuasive interpreter 
of Christ and of all human life in the light of his person, 
character, and work in his century.” ‘Of one thing I have 
become distinctly conscious,’ he himself said; ‘that my 
motto for life, my whole heart’s expression is, ‘None but 
Christ’; to have the mind of Christ; to feel as he felt; to 
judge the world and to estimate the world’s maxims as 
he judged and estimated, that is the thing worth living for.” 
This devotion to Christ was the root of his life and the 
spring of all his effort. “‘A nobler Christian gentleman 
never appeared among us,” said Sir William Robertson 
Nicoll, writing on the one hundredth anniversary of his 
birth. 
We may well take it as the standard of his own attain- 
ment in Christian greatness when he expresses himself as 
follows in one of the most penetrating utterances in one of 
the most profound of his sermons: ‘“‘It is not difficult to 
get away into retirement, and there live upon your own 
convictions; nor is it difficult to mix with men, and follow 
their convictions; but to enter into the world, and there 
live out firmly and fearlessly according to your own 
conscience, that is Christian greatness.”’ 


IX 


CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON 
(1834-1892) 
‘‘A Root Out oF A Dry GROUND” 


HuMAN conditions, whether of heredity or environment, 
can scarcely prognosticate such a man as Charles H. 
Spurgeon. Digging in the ancestral soil hardly discovers 
even the roots of the greatness to which he grew. That 
ancestry was not without real and considerable worth. 
But it gave no intimation of the greatness that was to come 
in this particular piece of its progeny. His own personal 
appearance was disappointing. To look on him was to 
find both his face and his form almost entirely without at- 
tractiveness. He was born at Kelvedon, in Essex, June 19, 
1834. But neither the soil nor the skies of Essex are suf- 
ficient to account for the man. His father was employed 
as a business man on week days, and ministered on Sundays 
for sixteen years to a congregation of Independents not 
faraway. When about eighteen months old baby Spurgeon 
was transferred, for reasons which have never yet become 
clearly known, to his grandfather’s manse at Stambourne. 
There in a minister’s home and with a devoted unmarried 
aunt to mother him he spent several years. He turned 
even thus early to serious things, and afterwards said of 
those days that to be alone was “his boyish heaven.” 
His grandmother employed him on the hymns of Isaac 
Watts, offering him a penny for every one he committed 
to memory. But he so depleted her purse that she reduced 
his wages to a halfpenny a hymn. The grandfather inter- 
fered with the arrangement by offering the boy a shilling 

(215) 


216 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


a dozen for all the rats he would kill, since the place was 
grievously infested with them. For the time the rat-catch- 
ing was the better paying business, but he said that in the 
long run hymn-learning paid better, particularly if a boy 
were going to be a preacher. An observation of these 
days he afterwards used with telling effect. He saw an 
apple inside a narrow-necked bottle, and greatly wondered 
why the bottle was not broken when the apple was inserted, 
until in the orchard one day he saw a bottle attached to 
the limb of an apple tree and a young apple growing on the 
inside. 

He returned to the house of his father, who was now 
living in Colchester, and had rather irregular schooling, 
though it was the best the circumstances permitted, until 
he was about fourteen years of age, when he was sent to an 
Anglican school at Maidstone. He quickly mastered his 
studies, showing a particular proficiency in mathematics. 
And he had begun already to think independently, for 
when he had had a debate with a clerical examiner on 
baptism he determined that if ever he was converted he 
would become a Baptist, notwithstanding his family were 
Congregationalists. 


EARLY RELIGIOUS QUEST 


Through his later childhood and early teens he struggled 
against God, and resisted the call of conscience to a re- 
ligious life. That one so circumstanced and so trained and 
still so young should have had such bitter exercises of soul 
is inexplicable. Who can say but that it was God’s way of 
training him that he might be a guide to others? For in 
after years he was a master physician in the troubles of 
the soul. ‘I must confess,” he says, speaking of these ex- 
periences, ‘‘that I never would have been saved if I could 
have helped it. As long as ever I could I revolted, and re- 


PebePrryAND “PASTORATE 217 


belled, and struggled against God.’ But the Lord and 
his mother’s prayers never left him alone. ‘‘Long before 
I began with Christ, he began with me,” said he. To his 
mother he owed his first religious awakening. Her very 
prayers stirred his soul to self-concern. Once his father, 
on the way to a preaching engagement, had his heart 
smite him with the thought that he was caring for others 
and neglecting his own family. He was so impressed that 
he turned and retraced his steps to his home, and finding 
all quiet in the lower rooms he ascended the stairs, and 
heard a voice in prayer. Listening outside the door he 
heard his wife pleading for the children, with an especial 
earnestness in the plea for Charles, her firstborn and strong- 
willed son. ‘‘My father,’ said Charles, who tells the story, 
‘felt that he might safely go about his Master’s business 
while the dear wife was caring so well for the spiritual in- 
terests of the boys and girls at home, so he did not disturb 
her, but proceeded at once to fulfill his preaching engage- 
ment.” 

When his struggle for peace had become so intense as 
to be all but unbearable the memorable day of his conver- 
sion came. The very date was ever after written down in 
his calendar, January 6, 1850, when he was not yet sixteen. 
A storm prevented his reaching his intended place of wor- 
ship for the day, and he turned aside into the Primitive 
Methodist Chapel, in Artillery Street, Colchester. The 
appointed preacher did not arrive, and a humble and still 
unknown man took his place. From the pulpit he an- 
nounced the text, “‘Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the 
ends of the earth.’”’ ‘‘My dear friends,” said he, ‘‘this is a 
simple text. It says, Look. Now lookin’ don’t take a deal 
of pains. It ain’t liftin’ your foot or your finger. It is 
just ‘Look.’ Well, a man needn’t go to college to learn to 
look. You may be the biggest fool and yet you can look. 


218 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


You needn’t be worth a thousand a year to be able to look. 
Anyone can look: even a child can look. But then the 
text says, ‘Look unto me.’ Ay!” said he in broad Essex, 
“many on ye are lookin’ to yourselves, but it’s no use 
lookin’ there. You'll never find any comfort in yourselves. 
Some look to God the Father. No, look to him by-and-by. 
Jesus Christ says, ‘Look unto me.’ Some on ye say, ‘We 
must wait for the Spirit’s workin’.” You have no business 
with that just now. Look to Christ. The text says, ‘Look 
unto me.’’’ ‘Then he turned to the young stranger, who was 
easily distinguishable among his small group of twelve or 
fifteen auditors, and addressing him directly, he said: 
“Young man, you look very miserable. You always will 
be miserable—miserable in life and miserable in death— 
if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this mo- 
ment you will be saved.’’ Young Spurgeon looked and was 
saved. “‘I thought,” said he, “‘I could dance all the way 
home. I could understand what John Bunyan meant 
when he declared that he wanted to tell the crows on the 
ploughed land all about his conversion.” 


BEGINS TO PREACH 


His first impulse toward the ministry came from Richard 
Knill, who came to his grandfather’s house on a missionary 
deputation when Spurgeon himself, then only ten years 
old, was on a visit there. For the three days of his stay 
he devoted himself with all the ardor of his soul to the 
winning of this child to the love of Christ, and predicted 
that he would one day preach the gospel. 

In pursuance of his promptly formed purpose to devote 
all his powers to Christian service Spurgeon began to teach 
in a Sunday school. There was committed to his tutelage 
a class of very restless boys. When he had lost control of 
them he would regain it by telling a story. Here he learned 


BUCPEL SAND PASTORATE - 219 


one of his first lessons in homiletics, for a boy would say 
very frankly, ‘This is very dull, teacher. Can’t you pitch 
us a yarn?’ He preached his first sermon unexpectedly 
and all but unawares, for he had gone out with another ex- 
pecting him to preach while from the first this other had 
intended to inveigle Spurgeon into doing the preaching. 
The sermon was delivered on a Lord’s day evening, in a 
thatched cottage, from the text, ‘‘Unto you that believe 
he is precious.’ In the meantime he had been employed 
as a teacher, and was preaching on the side. He did more 
preaching on the side, however, than most men do by 
main intention. For besides the Sunday services he had 
now begun to preach on the week days. After a few months 
of irregular preaching he was engaged to supply the pulpit 
in the village of Waterbeach. The original agreement upon 
the length of the term of his service was for but a few Sun- 
days, but he continued for more than two years. The little 
chapel was soon filled. Among the rest the vagabonds of 
the village came to his services and were transformed into 
moral assets of the community. Already his form of ut- 
terance is original and daring. There must be an utter 
change of the moral nature, he said, for if a thief went un- 
changed to heaven he would be only a thief still and would 
go around the place picking the angels’ pockets. He was 
criticized for this, and was reminded that the angels had 
no pockets. He said he had not known this and would 
set the matter right. So on the next Sunday he told his 
people he was sorry he had made this mistake, that the 
mayor of Cambridge, which was only six miles away, had 
told him that the angels had no pockets, so he would now 
_ say that if a thief got among the angels he would go around 
stealing the feathers out of their wings. It is presumable 
that the mayor of Cambridge gave up trying to bring him 
around to proper and precise form. 


220 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


An idea of the extent of his labors at this time is afforded 
in the fact that he had preached six hundred and seventy 
sermons before his call to London came. He had not yet 
found the threshold of his great career, and while he 
labored and waited the question of entering a theological 
college for more thorough preparation had several times 
presented itself to his mind. He had at length definite 
thoughts of going to Stepney College, now Regent’s Park, 
and had an engagement to meet Dr. Angus, who at the 
time was its principal. Through a stupid misadventure. 
on the part of a servant girl they failed to meet, though for 
a considerable time they sat in separate rooms in the same 
house. Spurgeon was much disappointed, but as he was 
walking the same afternoon to an appointment a loud 
voice seemed to say to him: ‘‘Seekest thou great things for 
thyself? Seek them not.’’ He took this as a veritable 
word of the Lord, and then and there renounced all thought 
of college and college studies. He did not by any means, 
however, renounce personal habits of study, for in these 
he was very diligent and accomplished almost prodigious 
results. But he had really never cared very much about the 
college and what he thought it could do for him. 


THE LonG LEAP TO LONDON 


From the fens of Essex to a metropolitan pulpit which he 
created by his own might and ability, and where he became 
one of the most potent pulpit influences of nineteen Chris- 
tian centuries, was indeed a long leap. He came to London 
in rather a roundabout way. A deacon of the New Park 
Street Church was told by an out-of-town deacon, who had 
heard Spurgeon at a Sunday school meeting in Cambridge, 
that he ought to be invited to preach at New Park Street. 
When the invitation came Spurgeon was disposed to doubt 
the genuineness of it. But a second letter came, he ac- 


Peer AND) ‘PASEORATE , peusk 


cepted, was asked to come again, and was then asked to 
take the pulpit for six months. But he was still diffident 
about the matter and would venture to agree to a term of 
only three months. 

He was not yet wholly wise, nor very cultured, but he 
fell into wise and good hands, for the most part. He had 
appeared on the occasion of his first visit displaying in the 
pulpit a blue handkerchief with large white dots. Conse- 
quently the first gift of his deacons to him was a dozen white 
handkerchiefs. The hint was too obvious for so shrewd a 
man as Spurgeon to miss. There have been deacons and 
other boards of Church officials who have: been far less 
wise and courteous and tactful in dealing with unsophisti- 
cated young preachers than this, and thereby much harm 
has been done. There were those in the London Churches 
when Spurgeon came there who were not without the 
power to discern large possibilities of development in him, 
and they were disposed to help and not to hinder. He 
had not been long installed in his new pastorate when a 
devastating scourge of Asiatic cholera swept the city, 
taking its merciless toll of his own people. He did not falter 
in the least in his task. But when nature was exhausted 
and he had grown inexpressibly weary in body and sick at 
heart with the persistent horror of it all, he saw on returning 
from a funeral a sign in a tradesman’s shop which read: 
‘‘Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, 
even the Most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil 
befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwell- 
ing.’’ He felt immediate comfort and relief, and went on 
unharmed to the end. 

Success waited instantly on his labors in London. His 
church was crowded and in every way inadequate to his 
uses. The ventilation was very poor, and he applied to the 
deacons to let him have more air. They dallied and delayed 


Maas PRINCES OF THE CHRIS Tia 


until they were surprised one morning to find that some 
one had gone about the building in the night and broken 
out many of the window lights. When they proposed in 
their official meeting to offer a reward for the detection of 
the culprit Spurgeon dissuaded them. He did not care 
under the circumstances to win the reward. 

Finally his desire for a larger building was to be gratified 
through the alteration of the old one. While this work was 
in progress the congregation repaired for the preaching 
services to Exeter Hall, which, though it was of unusual 
size, was crowded from the beginning. The extension of 
his fame, however, brought also its disadvantages. He 
began to be severely criticized and was coarsely caricatured. 
The Saturday Review, which had been called by John Bright 
the Saturday Reviler, was foremost in these attacks. “A 
true Christian,’’ Spurgeon was driven under the excess of 
its abuse to say, ‘‘is one who fears God, and is hated by 
the Saturday Review.’ Superficially he was no doubt more 
or less open to these attacks, though the event proved that 
down at the heart of the matter he was too big for them. 
And they really helped him more than they hindered him. 
They were not only the occasion of the increase of his in- 
fluence and his fame, but they caused him deep searchings 
of heart, which are good for any man, and more especially 
for a man leaping and bounding into prominence as Spur- 
geon was. He was sane enough to know that these things 
could not hurt him if he faced them out in the right way. 
One so much praised as he was could but be well served by 
some blame. ‘This I hope I can say from my heart,” he 
said, ‘if to be made as the mire of the street again, if to 
be the laughingstock of fools and the song of the drunkard 
once more, will make me more serviceable to my Master 
and more useful to his cause, I will prefer it to all this multi- 
tude, or to all the applause man can give.”’ By his very 


Pept? SAND EASTORATE Maes 


temperament he provoked two attitudes toward himself, 
with a tendency to excess in each: he was likely to be rather 
too highly praised or to be too severely blamed. He en- 
countered the danger which, according to a later suggestion 
of Dr. C. E. Jefferson in his “Building of the Church,”’ is 
one of the disadvantages of the very position of the preach- 
er—namely, that if he is too much praised he is likely to 
develop ‘‘self-consciousness in the major key,’”’ whereas if 
if he is too much blamed he is likely to develop “‘self- 
consciousness in the minor key.’’ And neither is a happy 
condition, either for the preacher or for his people. 

Not even Bishop Wilberforce was free from the disposi- 
tion to pour a little vitriol on Spurgeon’s growing fame, 
for when he was asked whether he did not envy the Non- 
conformists their possession of him, he replied: “‘Thou 
shalt not covet thy neighbor’s ass.’’ Nevertheless this 
young stripling of a Nonconformist, when but twenty-one 
years of age, was the talk of the town and a surpassingly 
pupular preacher. He sometimes took from ten to twelve 
services a week, and everywhere there were crowded con- 
gregations. The enlarged church at New Park Street 
proved to be too small, and there was a return to Exeter 
Hall. But this now was found also to be too small, so some 
steps must be taken to secure a building adequate to the 
demands. Surrey Music Hall, where he remained for three 
years, and the Crystal Palace, which he used for a very brief 
time, were the scenes of his preaching in the interval. Con- 
cerning his first service in the former, attended by ten 
thousand people, while as many more had gathered in the 
gardens on the outside unable to gain admittance, the fol- 
lowing lines were written: ‘‘Ecclesiastically viewed, Sun- 
day last was one of the most eventful nights that have 
descended on the metropolis for generations. On that oc- 
casion the largest, most commodious, and most beautiful 


224 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


building erected for public amusement in this mighty city 
was taken possession of for the purpose of proclaiming the 
gospel of salvation. There, where for a long period wild 
beasts had been exhibited, and wilder men had been ac- 
customed to congregate, in countless multitudes, for idle — 
pastime, was gathered together the largest audience that 
ever met in any edifice in these British Isles to listen to the 
voice of a Nonconformist minister.’’ In the Crystal Palace 
he preached by actual count at the turnstiles to more than 
twenty-three thousand people. 

On March 21, 1861, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, built 
for Spurgeon’s own congregation, and destined to be the 
scene of his further triumphant ministry, was opened for 
the first preaching service. It was said that more than a 
million people had contributed to the cost of its erection. 
Here for more than thirty years, and until he was able no 
longer to preach at all, he swayed such an audience as 
hardly ever sat so long and so continuously under the min- 
istry of a single man in all the history of Christian preach- 
ing. ‘‘My congregation got my congregation,” he said. 
And they were gotten from all over the English-speaking 
world. ‘‘Here,” said a man found at the service who was 
known not to attend elsewhere, ‘‘every man has his own 
tale told.” Here Spurgeon said he could whisper and be 
heard in every part of the building, while he could shout 
and be heard nowhere. And one wonders why preachers 
still will not take this simple lesson in acoustics to heart. 

During the thirty-eight years of his London pastorate 
there were baptized and added to his Church 14,460 per- 
sons. It was estimated that by all methods there came into 
the Church under his ministry nearly twenty thousand 
persons. He thought there was not a seat in the Taber- 
nacle in which some one had not been converted. The 
total membership there shortly before his death was 5,311, 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 225 


It was no wonder that at the head of this vast Christian 
enterprise he could found and maintain a successful Pas- 
tor’s College, and establish an orphanage, which, considered 
in themselves, constituted an immense achievement. In 
London alone there were opened thirty-six chapels the 
pastors of which were trained at the college founded and 
directed by him. His orphanage received applicants for 
admission without reference to denominational affiliations 
and sheltered as many as five hundred children at a time. 


His UNACCUSTOMED AND UNACCOUNTABLE ACHIEVEMENT 


Great achievement excites human inquisitiveness. Valor 
and ability on the battle field, great exploits in exploration 
and discovery, mastery in fields of science and philosophy, 
and in the spheres of business and government, great in- 
tellect, great character, a great poet, a great preacher— 
great achievement, in whatever sphere displayed or won, 
not only incites to admiration, but arouses inquiry as to 
the source and secret of it all. The world is forever measur- 
ing and remeasuring its great men to know on what meat 
they have fed that they have grown so great. This laudable 
inquisitiveness the life, character, and career of Spurgeon 
incite to an unusual degree. How is he to be accounted 
for? Well, no process of the sort, as a matter of course, 
can ever be final or complete. Life is a force too significant 
and too elusive ever to be subjected to exact and final 
analysis. Much more is this true as life expresses itself in 
great Christian character and achievement. We only 
judge what we can judge and leave the rest to God who 
is Judge of all. 

The more distinctly defined gifts and qualities of Mr. 
Spurgeon, however, it will not be difficult to judge. 

1. We may well begin with his convinced religious and 


theological belief. Christianity was to him a supernatural 
tS 


226 PRINCES OF THE’ CHRISTI 


creation and Christian character a process in which the 
action of the grace of God is just as supernatural as is the 
being of God himself. He preached the gospel of the grace 
of God. Indeed, he conceived the gospel he preached to 
be the grace of God itself in action for the redemption of 
man. He preached it with power because he preached it 
with this conviction. It convinced others because it had 
first convinced him. Others were made certain of it because 
he had first been made certain of it himself. Religion was 
to him more than a belief; it was a conviction. It was more 
than a habit; it was an experience. It was more than a 
code of conduct; it was a character. When Dr. Joseph 
Parker had gone once and preached there he came back and 
spoke warmly of the climate of the Tabernacle. ‘‘I do not 
know that I was ever in such a climate,”’ said he, ‘‘during 
the whole course of my ministry; every one seemed to be 
aflame with sacred zeal and love.” 

(1) He was a pronounced Calvinist. ‘“‘He apparently 
had not the slightest doubt,’ as Dr. Brastow has said, 
“that Calvinism was identical with Christianity.” But 
his Calvinism was not of the reserved or esoteric sort that 
is kept in books and laid away on shelves. His was a very 
_ practical sort, and from it he extracted first of all a strong 
sense of vocation. ‘‘What was the power which launched 
this grim projectile through his times?”’ asks Principal 
George Adam Smith in his recent volume on “ Jeremiah,” 
as he writes the story of the soul of that most valiant of 
all the prophets. ‘‘Part at least,’’ he continues, ‘‘was his 
faith in his predestination, the bare sense that God Al- 
mighty meant him from before his beginning for the work, 
and was gripping him to it till the close. This alone pre- 
vailed over his reluctant nature, his protesting affections, 
and his adverse circumstance. 


Peel AND PASTORATE jpell 


‘Before in the body I built thee, I knew thee, ; 
Before thou wast from the womb, I had put thee apart, 
I have set thee a prophet to the nations.’ 


From the first and all through it was God’s choice of him, 
the knowledge of himself as a thought of the Deity and a 
consecrated instrument of the Divine Will, which grasped 
this unbraced and sensitive creature, this alternately dis- 
couraged and impulsive man, and turned him, as we have 
seen, into the opposite of himself.’’ This was not pre- 
cisely what Spurgeon got from his Calvinism. But he did 
get the sense of vocation as leading him in his own peculiar 
direction, along with his acceptance of the Calvinistic idea 
of election, not to mission and service merely, but to sal- 
vation. This total conviction was wrought in him to an 
unusual degree. ‘‘I am as much called,” he says, ‘“‘to 
preach the gospel as Paul was.’’ None need doubt it; but 
what concerns us here is the strength of his conviction of 
the fact. 

Strange to say, his Calvinism, rigid as it was, constituted 
a sort of democracy which was better for practical religious 
uses than a weak and undefined universalism. For one 
thing, it left him entirely without respect of persons. This 
was a thing which God did, and not man, and whoever came 
to his Tabernacle heard the one gospel he had to preach. 
Whether, as Mr. P. W. Wilson has said, it were ‘‘ Ruskin, 
or Gladstone, or an Archbishop of Canterbury, Spurgeon 
did not swerve one hair’s breadth from his ultimatum. 
However illustrious the worshiper, the choice, even for 
him, still lay between heaven and hell.’”’ Sir William 
Robertson Nicoll thought it could not be doubted that his 
theology was a main element in his lasting attraction. He 
has admirably stated the point as follows: ‘‘Mr. Spurgeon 
always made salvation a wonderful, a supernatural thing— 
won through battle and agony and garments rolled in blood. 


228 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


That the blood of God should be one of the ordinary forces 
of the universe was to him a thing incredible. This great 
and hard-won salvation was sure—that is, ‘it did not stand 
in the creature’; it rested absolutely with God. It was not 
of man, nor of the will of the flesh. Mr. Spurgeon’s hearers 
had many of them missed all the prizes of life; but God did 
not choose for reasons that move man’s preference, else 
their case were hopeless. Their election was of grace. And 
as he chose them, he would keep them. The perseverance 
of the saints is a doctrine without meaning to the majority 
of Christians. But many a poor girl with the love of Christ 
and goodness in her heart, working her fingers to the bone 
for a pittance that just keeps her alive, with the tempta- 
tions of the streets around her, and the river beside her, 
listened with all her soul when she heard that Christ’s 
sheep could never perish. Many a struggling tradesman 
tempted to dishonesty, many a widow with penury and 
loneliness before her, were lifted above all, taught to look 
through and over the years coming thick with sorrow and 
conflict, and anticipate a place in the Church Triumphant.”’ 
Surely there is a lesson here for Arminians. It is not this 
or that aspect or interpretation of the gospel which saves, 
whether it be Arminianism or Calvinism, but the gospel 
down at the heart of it as it centers in Christ and his will 
to redeem, preached in the power and demonstration of the 
Holy Spirit, that saves. How else will you account for the 
equal success in evangelism of Wesley and Whitefield, the 
one a convinced Calvinist and the other a steadfast Ar- 
minian, as they go out side by side in all England and into 
the world? 

Spurgeon steadfastly believed that Christian preaching 
could only be done in the power of the Holy Spirit. And 
he made good that belief by doing his own preaching in 
conscious and constant reliance upon that power. It was 


Beer beAND PASTORATE 229 


as much his experience to preach in the power of the Spirit 
as it was his experience to live in obedience to the principles 
of the Christian life in the power of the Spirit. He used to 
say that as he stood preaching in the great Tabernacle he 
would be saying to himself even as he preached: “‘I wonder 
who is being converted now.’’ Conversions were expected 
as an instant and a continual transaction of his preaching. 
When a great Nonconformist Christian leader was once 
asked what he considered to be the secret of Spurgeon’s 
success he answered instantly, as if his mind had already 
matured the matter: ‘‘The Holy Ghost.” 

(2) He had very definite beliefs about man’s sin and the 
process of his salvation. There was perfect agreement 
between his understanding of the Scriptures in their bearing 
upon the moral state of man and his own knowledge of 
human nature. He accepted quite literally and faithfully 
that saying of Jesus that “‘they that are whole have no need 
of a physician, but they that are sick’’; and he conceived 
that he himself had come to call not the righteous, but 
sinners to repentance. There could scarcely be found in the 
English language a more effective statement of the simple 
gospel than in his sermon on ‘‘Lifting up the Brazen Ser- 
pent.’’ In that sermon he has this passage: ‘‘ We are not 
in doubt as to what sin will do, for we are told by the in- 
fallible word that ‘the wages of sin is death,’ and, yet again, 
‘Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.’ We know 
also that this death is endless misery, for the Scripture 
describes the lost as being cast into outer darkness, ‘where 
their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched.’ Our 
Lord speaks of the condemned going away into everlasting 
punishment, where there shall be weeping, and wailing, 
and gnashing of teeth. We ought to have no doubt about 
this, and the most of those who profess to doubt it are those 
who fear that it will be their own portion, who know that 


230 PRINCES OF THE GHRISTIaAT 


they are going down to eternal woe themselves, and there- 
fore they try to shut their eyes to their inevitable doom. 
Alas, that there should be flatterers in the pulpit who pander 
to their love of sin by piping to the same tune. We are 
not of their order. We believe in what the Lord has said 
in all its solemnity of dread, and, knowing the terrors of 
the Lord, we persuade men to escape therefrom.”’ 

On the other hand, he diagnosed the human conscience 
and found there disease and all the dread damage from 
which there was no escape except by way of the cross. 
“‘He handled the casualties.’’ Other men might find lighter 
work to do, but he preferred this. He did not believe in 
‘paring down depravity.” And he recorded his objection 
to this procedure in the following graphic language: ‘‘ When 
a man gets to cutting down sin, paring down depravity, 
and making little of future punishment, let him no longer 
preach to you. Some modern divines whittle away the 
gospel to the small edge of nothing. They make our divine 
Lord to be a sort of blessed nobody; they bring down salva- 
tion to mere salvability, making certainties into probabili- 
ties, and treat verities as mere opinions. When you see a 
preacher making the gospel small by degrees and miserably 
less, until there is not enough of it left to make soup for a 
sick grasshopper, get you gone. ... As for me, I believe in 
the colossal; a need deep as hell and grace as high as 
heaven. I believe in a pit that is bottomless and a heaven 
that is topless. I believe in an infinite God and infinite 
atonement, infinite love and mercy, an everlasting cove- 
nant ordered in all things and sure, of which the substance 
and the reality is an infinite Christ.’’. There was néver 
any mistaking what the man meant. Dr. John Brown, in 
his ‘‘ Puritan Preaching in England,” quotes what an early 
reviewer had to say of Spurgeon and adds that the same 
thing might still be said of him at a date forty years later. 


FUEPIT AND: PASTORATE on 


And this is what the reviewer had said: ‘‘ The philosophical 
precision, the literary refinements, the nice discriminations 
between what we may know of a doctrine and what we 
may not, leaving us, in the end, perhaps scarcely anything 
to know about—all this, which, according to some, is so 
much needed by the age, is Mr. Spurgeon’s utter scorn. 
He is the direct dogmatic enunciator of the old Pauline 
truth, without the slightest attempt to soften its outline, 
its substance, or its results—and what has followed? 
Truly, Providence would seem to have made foolish once 
more the wisdom of this world. While the gentlemen who 
know so well how people ought to preach are left to ex- 
emplify their profound lessons before empty benches and 
in obscure corners, this young man can point to six thou- 
sand hearers every Sunday and ask: ‘Who, with such a sight 
before him, dares despair of making the gospel—the good 
old gospel—a power in the great heart of humanity?’”’ 

2. There was never a ministry more marked by insistence 
on conversion. This was a necessity of his theology and of 
his total religious conviction. But it was also a necessity 
of the ardor of his soul. Over his first convert—a laborer’s 
wife at Waterbeach—he rejoiced as over the first sheaf of a 
great harvest. “If anybody had said to me,” he said, 
‘Somebody has left you twenty thousand pounds,’ I should 
not have given a snap of my fingers for it compared with 
the joy which I felt when I was told that God had saved a 
soul through my ministry.’ It was incomparably more to 
him than his first sermon, for his sermons were made for 
souls, and not souls for his sermons. He rejoiced more than 
any doctor who had brought his first patient back from the 
gates of death, more than any lawyer who had saved his 
first client from the condemnation of the law. 

Dr. Theodore Cuyler said of him that ‘‘he sowed the 
gospel with one hand and reaped conversions with the 


(232 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


other. His Church was like the orange trees I saw in 
California; there were white blossoms on some limbs and 
ripe golden fruit on some other limbs.’’ He preached, he 
prayed, he toiled, he administered affairs for the con- 
version of men. Here is the record of a single day in his 
early ministry: ‘‘Leaving home early in the morning, I 
went to the chapel, and sat there all day long, seeing those 
who had been brought to Christ by the preaching of the. 
word. Their stories were so interesting to me that the 
hours flew by without my noticing how fast they were 
going. I may have seen some thirty or more persons during 
the day, one after the other, and I was so delighted with the 
tales of mercy they had to tell me, and the wonders of 
grace God had wrought in them, that I did not know any- 
thing about how the time passed. At seven o’clock we had 
our prayer meeting. I went in and prayed with the breth- 
ren. After that came the Church meeting. A little before 
ten I felt faint, and I began to think at what hour I had 
my dinner, and then for the first time remembered that I 
had not had any! I never thought of it. I never even felt 
hungry, because God had made me so glad.” 

Certain sermons were notable for their converting power. 
The sermon to which the greatest testimony has been 
borne for this effect was that on the text, “‘Compel them 
to come in.” It was said that some hundreds came into 
the Church as a result of this sermon when it was preached, 
and that many others came in through its effect when it 
had gone out in printed form. For his printed sermons 
also had a remarkable converting power. In this form they 
had a vast circulation and exercised an incalculable in- 
fluence. In this Spurgeon has reached a farther goal than 
any other. Here he holds the world’s record. Dr. A. E. 
Garvie, in “The Christian Preacher,’’ makes the statement 
that “about two thousand five hundred of his sermons have 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 233 


been published, and the average sale of each was 25,000 
copies.” They have been distributed, too, in other lan- 
guages besides the English. Thus his power has been 
diffused to an unexampled degree and exercised upon 
a very wide diversity of persons. A gentleman heard him- 
self accosted by a stranger on the streets of San Francisco 
as a preacher. ‘‘I am not a preacher, my friend,” he re- 
plied. The explanation of the false identification was that 
on board a steamer coasting to Oregon some one had pro- 
duced a volume of Spurgeon’s sermons, and this gentleman 
had been induced to read one of them aloud to as many of 
the ship’s company and crew as would gather for a religious 
service, and the stranger speaking to him had been one of 
his hearers. And so in unprecedented ways like this his 
voice went out to the ends of the earth. 

The most amazing thing about these sermons, in what- 
ever form you take them, is the volume of their evangelistic 
content. Everywhere he explains the way of salvation in 
simple terms. He would have nothing else. A man came 
to the Tabernacle and offered him seven thousand pounds 
for any use to which he might be disposed to put it on 
condition that as a consideration the offerer of the sum 
might be received as a member. He pressed his claim 
when Spurgeon refused, but received the firm reply: “‘ No; 
nor if you offered me seventy times seven thousand pounds.” 
According to his own word he was “‘always in training for 
text-getting and sermon-making.” But neither was an 
end in itself. He was always for getting men. He had a 
great array of Bible commentaries around the shelves of 
his study and consulted all of them to see what each had 
to say on his text when he was preparing a sermon; but he 
used the commentaries and did not permit them to use 
him. Preachers may dispute about some of his homiletical 
methods, but all of them may follow his homiletical aim. 


234 PRINCES ORY DEE GER IS 


For his desire to win men shaped his ministry and gave 
law to his homiletics. 

3. He possessed remarkable powers of delivery, in com- 
bination with other gifts the power of which is greatly en- 
hanced through effective delivery. He combined in an 
eminent degree powers of observation, insight, and ut- 
terance. He saw, he understood, he spoke. 

(1) He possessed a voice of unparalleled strength and 
penetration, and he had unusual command of it. Dr. J. 
M. Buckley, who heard him frequently and studied him 
critically, speaks of his voice as being unparalleled in both 
its strength and its melody. ‘‘Two orators of the first 
rank,’ says Dr. Nicoll, “have appeared in our time—Mr. 
Bright and Mr. Spurgeon.” He is writing specially of 
Spurgeon and continues: “‘Spurgeon’s marvelous voice, 
clear as a silver bell’s and winning as a woman’s, rose up 
against the surging multitude and without effort entered 
every ear.’ He spoke in that natural tone of voice which 
at its base is conversational. He had no thought of play- 
ing the orator, and that was one of the reasons why he was 
so good an orator. It was said that the auditor was pre- 
possessed in his favor because he ‘‘had no Sunday voice.” 
He used only his natural voice whether he appeared in the 
pulpit, on the platform, or anywhere else. And the main 
secret of this for any man is sincerity. Dr. Brown says he 
was ‘‘as natural in the pulpit as John Bright was on the 
platform, and often more ‘racy.’’ Once when a series of 
meetings was being held in London in a large and difficult 
hall several speakers had appeared in their turn who had 
met insurmountable obstacles to being heard. Then Spur- 
geon came and mounted the platform and opened his lips 
and without the least difficulty sent the sound of his voice 
distinctly through every part of the building. 

(2) The force and directness of his Anglo-Saxon speech 





Burd AND PAS LORATE Do 


was one of his most notable possessions. He was “‘a speaker 
of superb English, a master of that Saxon speech which 
somehow goes warm to the hearts of men.’ This speech 
was native to him; and it was also cultivated. He formed 
his speech on the model of the English Bible, over which he 
pored as a bride over her jewels; and on John Bunyan, 
whose ‘‘ Pilgrim’s Progress’’ he read a hundred times; and 
on the Puritan and other masters of English prose and 
poetry. His style may be seen even in a brief extract, 
which will at the same time exhibit his effectiveness in the 
use of illustration. ‘‘Have you ever read Coleridge’s 
‘Ancient Mariner’?”’ he asks. “‘I dare say you have 
thought it one of the strangest imaginations ever put to- 
gether, especially that part of it where the old mariner 
represents the corpses of all the dead men rising up—all of 
them dead, yet rising up to manage the ship; dead men 
pulling the ropes, dead men steering, dead men spreading 
the sails. I thought what a strange idea that was. But 
do you know I have lived to see that true: I have seen it 
done. I have gone into churches, and I have seen a dead 
man in the pulpit, and a dead man as a deacon, and a 
dead man holding the plate at the door, and dead men sit- 
ting to hear. ‘No!’ says one, “you cannot mean it.’ Yes, 
I do; the men were spiritually dead. I have seen the 
minister preaching, without a particle of life, a sermon 
which is fresh only in the sense in which a fish is fresh when 
it has been packed in ice. I have seen the people sit, and 
they listened as if they had been a group of statues—the 
chiseled marble would have been as much affected by the 
sermon as they. I have seen the deacons go about their 
business just as orderly, and with as much precision as if 
they had been mere automatons, and not men with hearts 
and souls at all. Do you think God will ever bless a 
Church like that? Are we ever to take the kingdom of 


236 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


heaven with a troop of dead men? Never! We want living 
ministers, living hearers, living deacons, living elders; and 
until we have such men who have got the very fire of life 
burning in their souls, who have got tongues of life and 
souls of life, we shall never see the kingdom of heaven 
taken by storm. ‘For the kingdom of heaven suffereth 
violence, and the violent take it by force.’”’ 

The directness of his speech was greatly assisted by his 
keenness of observation and his almost uncanny knowl- 
edge of human nature. At one time he could sit on the 
Tabernacle platform and name every one of his five thou- 
sand members. Even those with whom he had but a 
chance acquaintance were recognized as they sat in his 
congregation. He had shrewd ways of letting them know 
that they were recognized; and the uncanniness of his 
art was displayed in surprising designations of unknown 
individuals in the audience. Instances of this have been | 
preserved. He once said that there was a man in the gal- 
lery listening to him with a bottle of gin in his pocket. 
There was actually such a man, and he was so startled by 
the remark that it led to his conversion. ‘‘ Young man,” 
said he, pointing one Sunday evening toward the gallery, 
‘the gloves you have in your pocket are not paid for.” 
After the service a young man came and begged him not to 
say anything more about it. The incident led to his con- 
version. Pointing in a given direction at another time, he 
said: ‘‘There is a man sitting there who is a shoemaker; 
he keeps his shop open on Sundays; it was open last Sab- 
bath morning. He took in ninepence, and there was four- 
pence profit on it; his soul is sold to Satan for fourpence.” 
There sat such a man sure enough. He was afraid to go to 
hear Spurgeon any more lest he should tell the people more 
about him; but after a time he did go again, and he, too, 
was converted. A woman intent upon suicide came into 


PULPIL AND PASTORATE 237 


his service, as if somehow that would ease her conscience 
of the dread issue of the transaction. The text, ‘‘Seest 
thou this woman?’’ seemed strangely directed to her, and 
the sermon saved both her life and her soul. All this 
sounds like Sherlock Holmes; only it is fact, not fiction. 

(3) Pathos and humor moved as two willing handmaidens 
duteously attendant upon his speech. He could be as 
pungent as when he said: ‘‘The way to defend a lion is to 
let him out of his cage.’’ He possessed the key to the 
human heart and could be as tender and delicate in his 
approach to it as if he had been an angel revealing to the 
Virgin the coming of her Holy Child. When he would say 
that grace is sufficient for all our need, this is how he puts 
it: ‘‘The other evening I was riding home after a day’s 
work; I felt very wearied and sore depressed, when swiftly, 
and suddenly as a lightning flash, that text came to me, 
‘My grace is sufficient for thee.’ I reached home and 
looked it up in the original, and at last it came to me in 
this way, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee,’ and I said, ‘I 
should think it is, Lord,’ and burst out laughing. I never 
fully understood what the holy laughter of Abraham was 
until then. It seemed to make unbelief so absurd. It 
was as though some little fish, being very thirsty, was 
troubled about drinking the river dry, and Father Thames 
said: ‘Drink away, little fish; my stream is sufficient for 
thee.’ Or it seemed like a little mouse in the granaries of 
Egypt, after the seven years of plenty, fearing it might die 
of famine. Joseph might say: ‘Cheer up, little mouse; my 
granaries are sufficient for thee.’ Again I imagined a man 
away up yonder in a lofty mountain, saying to himself: 
‘I breathe so many cubic feet of air every year I fear I shall 
exhaust the oxygen in the atmosphere.’ But the earth 
might say: ‘Breathe away, O man, and fill thy lungs ever; 
my atmosphere is sufficient for thee.’ O brethren, be 


238 PRINCES 7OF “DHE BU EEE 


great believers! Such faith will bring your souls to heaven 
and heaven to your souls.”’ 

Early in the year 1891 he began to be ill, and it soon ap- 
peared that he could never be well again. He died at Men- 
tone, in France, whither he had gone for his health, on 
January 31, 1892. Mrs. Spurgeon and two sons were left 
in the inner circle of the bereaved. Countless thousands 
mourned besides. Some sixty thousand passed along the 
aisles of the Tabernacle to view his remains lying in state 
there. He was buried in Norwood Cemetery, London. 

‘“‘England’s greatest contribution to the spread of the 
gospel in the nineteenth century was Charles Haddon 
Spurgeon,’ said Dr. J. C. Carlile at the Berlin Congress of 
Baptist Churches. The great American Methodist, Dr. 
James M. Buckley, said of him: “‘From the point of view 
of a man whose work was done in one city and with the 
exception of a few years in one Church and one congrega- 
tion we consider him the greatest and most effective preach- 
er that has arisen in the history of Christianity.” 

Neither his exegesis nor his homiletics was faultless; 
there were some faults of character, as well as of manner 
and method, no doubt—as the not too much restrained 
conceit which he had of himself; but his noble simplicity 
of style and of speech, his fine scorn of pretense and of 
sham, his high and unfaltering courage in the pulpit, his 
abounding humor and deep and pathetic sense of human 
frailty and man’s need of God, his unaffected and unfailing 
interest in men and sympathy for them in all their sorrow 
and sin, his love of the Bible and fidelity to his understand- 
ing of it, his zeal for souls, his power of the compulsion of 
the human will, his total devotion to the cause of Christ— 
in all these English-speaking preachers may follow him, as 
God may give them grace and ability, until the gospel they 
preach is uttered in another tongue. 


x 


PHICELES BROOKS 
(1835-1893) 


BOSTON AND THE BEGINNINGS 


PHILLIPS BROOKS maintained with Boston an intimate 
relation for the full length of his life. He was born there 
on December 13, 1835. His home was there until he had 
finished his course in the theological seminary and went to 
Philadelphia, where he spent nine years in two pastorates. 
He returned to Boston for a pastorate of twenty-two 
years in Trinity Church. He lived there for one and a quar- 
ter years as Bishop of Massachusetts. He died there on 
January 23, 1893, and three days later was buried in Mount 
Auburn Cemetery. The connection is thus perpetually 
preserved, and Boston is ever more radiant through the ra- 
diance of his memory. 

Both lines of his ancestry are indicated in his name. 
He was a Phillips, and he was a Brooks; and both names 
had attained a certain distinction before they coalesced 
and won a wider fame in him. On a basis, therefore, of 
good blood and sturdy ancestral traits this family began 
to build; and it brought forth its capstone in the person of 
this anointed child. He was rich in ancestral culture, 
‘“‘the consummate flower of nine generations of cultured 
Puritan stock.”’ The family life was brought under con- 
straint to a certain degree of social reserve because of the 
limitation of its material resources. But none of them 
complained of this, and least of all the mother, of whom it 
was said that “‘she never accepted an invitation from home 
for any social function until her youngest child was grown 

(239) 


240 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


up and no longer needed her care.’’ The household turned 
upon the education of the children and their training in 
religion. Family worship was rigidly observed both morning 
and evening. For the first six years of their wedded life 
William Gray Brooks and Mary Ann Phillips were Uni- 
tarians. They had come to Boston when the liberal move- 
ment in religion and theology had become dominant there. 
But Mrs. Brooks was a very thoughtful woman and very 
ardent in her religious life. She was not satisfied with her 
religious connections, and when their third child, Phillips, 
was four years old the family removed to St. Paul’s Episco- 
pal Church, where the pastor was a foremost champion 
of evangelical Christianity. The father had been rather 
reluctant to leave the Unitarians, but eight years after 
changing his Church attendance to an Episcopal Church 
he received the rite of confirmation as a communicant in 
the same. In the meantime there had come a new pastor 
to the church, Dr. Alex H. Vinton, a very able and earnest 
man, who exercised a profound and most wholesome in- 
fluence upon the congregation, and particularly upon the 
Brooks family. The family went to church twice on Sun- 
day, and at home the children were required to learn a 
hymn to be recited at the gathering of the family in the 
evening. The father kept a careful record of the hymns 
each child learned. When Phillips went away to college 
there were some two hundred hymns learned in this way 
which he could repeat. 

When Phillips was four years of age he was sent to a 
private school, thence to a grammar school at eight, and 
finally to the Boston Latin School, where he remained for 
five years until he was ready for college. He had not 
proved to be a particularly diligent student and at twelve 
years of age endeavored to support a determination to do 
better things by the following vow: ‘‘I, Phillips Brooks, 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 241 


do hereby promise and pledge myself to study, hence- 
forward, to the best of my ability.”” Training in the classics 
received in the Latin School proved a permanent element in 
his education. 

Harvard College had by this time become a family tradi- 
tion, and there Phillips Brooks went in his sixteenth year. 
He was not without enthusiasm for college life, though he 
won no special distinction as a student except in composi- 
tion. His pen already gave unmistakable intimations of 
the skill he was to acquire as a writer. In athletics he took 
no interest at all. That he too much neglected physical 
culture was one of the minor mistakes of his life, if indeed 
it may be called minor. Later in life he admitted to a 
friend that it had been the mistake of his life not to have 
married. | 

He was graduated from Harvard in the class of 1855, 
while his twentieth birthday was still six months in the 
future. At this time the direction which the future course 
of his life should take was wholly undetermined. Just 
what he himself thought and felt about it nobody knows. 
He was characterized by a profound reserve of nature, 
and it is not possible to speak always with confidence con- 
cerning the things which he did not care to disclose to 
others. The Church and its ministry do not seem as yet 
to have attracted him. It is even possible that he enter- 
tained at least for a time a feeling of greater or less aversion 
toward the ministry. 

His first employment after graduation was as a teacher 
in the Boston Latin School. He probably designed that 
teaching should be his life work. But as a teacher he made 
a failure, a complete and humiliating failure. He was 
compelled to resign before the year was out. There is 
little use in seeking to assign all the causes. He was young 
and reserved and inexperienced and was given the charge 


242 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


of a very unruly class of older boys. There was in this 
fact some modification and softening of the fact of failure. 
Nevertheless, there stood the unalterable fact, and he felt 
it deeply and keenly. He was humiliated and discouraged 
by a failure so conspicuous and complete falling thus upon 
the very threshold of his life. A trial so bitter, a defeat so 
distressing, to a soul so sensitive and fine can but carry 
in it the seeds of a permanent sifting of the character. It 
would hardly be rash to say that the providence of God 
had barred his entrance here. 


GETTING INTO THE MINISTRY 


Getting into the ministry was not easy for Phillips 
Brooks. It was said of Lacordaire that ‘‘on the day of his 
conversion he was already a priest.’ Of whom might this 
be more fittingly said than of Phillips Brooks? Neverthe- 
less he has to grope his way to the open door. In the period 
of depression and misgiving which ensued upon his resigna- 
tion of his position as a teacher, which extended from Feb- 
ruary to October, 1856, he went to Dr. Walker, the Presi- 
dent of Harvard College, whose character both as a man 
and a preacher he greatly revered, to confer with him on 
the subject of his own future. Dr. Walker advised him to 
study for the ministry. ‘‘He did not tell me,” says Brooks, 
‘that I could not preach because of my stammering, for 
I never did stammer, you know.”’ Having proceeded thus 
far, he then went to Dr. Vinton to know what steps one 
should take who proposed to study for the ministry. He 
was told that this step usually came after confirmation 
and was reminded of the importance of conversion. To 
this he replied that he did not know what conversion 
meant. 

Back of all these transactions, in the shadows, stood the 
figure of his beloved mother. Above all things else she had 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 243 


desired that he should be a minister. Next to his conver- 
sion this was the summit of all her desire for him. At the 
time of his confirmation, which occurred when he had been 
a year in the Seminary, and when he was nearly twenty- 
two years old, she wrote: “I will thank God forever that 
he has answered my lifelong prayers in making him a Chris- 
tian and his servant in the ministry.’ Still later, after he 
had entered upon his active ministry, she wrote directly 
to him: ‘Thank you, my dear child, for the joy you have 
given me in devoting your life to the service of Christ. 
It was the desire of my heart from your birth, and I gave 
you up to him, and I thank him for accepting my offering.” 
Who but such a mother could hide such things in her 
heart? 

In this mother’s character the character of Phillips 
Brooks was molded. Dr. Vinton said of him that “‘he was 
made by his mother.”’ There also grew within him the con- 
viction that God was making common cause with his 
mother and that he must enter the ministry. ‘‘The spirit 
of an act,” said he afterwards in a passage of unmistakable 
autobiographic significance in one of his sermons, ‘comes 
from its motive. There must be a larger motive, then. 
And the largest of all motives is the sending of God.” 


AT THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 


With the Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church 
at Alexandria, Va., which he entered when he was scarcely 
twenty-one years of age, he was not pleased. “It is the 
most shiftless, slipshod place I ever saw,” he said in a letter 
to his father soon after his arrival. ‘‘The instruction here 
is very poor. All that we get in the lecture and recitation 
rooms I consider worth just nothing.”’ This was not all 
he said; but it was enough. Many of the students sawed 
their own wood, made their own fires, and did their own 


244 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


chores. He was of this number; but he was of better mettle 
than to chafe under this regimen. The curriculum and the 
instruction were his chief concern, and these were so un- 
satisfactory that he thought of going to Andover after his 
first year at Alexandria. Three famous teachers of theolo- 
gy—Edward A. Park, Austin Phelps, and W. G. T. Shedd— 
were then on the Andover faculty; and any one of the three 
easily excelled any one of the three men who then consti- 
tuted the entire faculty at Alexandria. But neither Dr. 
Vinton, who was still his pastor, nor his father approved 
the proposed change, and he stayed at Alexandria. Doubt- 
less even a poor theological seminary has its advantages, 
for it throws the student more upon his own resources, 
and forces him to take the fashioning of his theology into 
his own hands. Some of the wits will say that surely this 
is a fine thing, since there are so many such seminaries. 
Anyway Phillips Brooks learned at Alexandria to do his 
own thinking, and whether this was by the help he did or 
did not receive from his teachers does not now matter so 
much. Here again as at Harvard he shows a marked pre- 
dilection for the use of his pen. A system of notebook 
keeping which he now began reveals what came to be some 
of the permanent processes of his mind. These notes 
contain reflections upon what he read and observed and 
were especially full of the record of the thoughts of his own 
mind. There is manifest in them at times the conscious- 
ness of an invisible audience and an anticipation of the 
work of his pulpit, toward which even now his earnest 
thoughts are turning. Some kind of notebook became his 
inseparable companion. Here he garnered the stores 
which so enriched his ministry when under the strain of 
the demands of a busy pastorate he could not find full time 
for his pulpit preparation. 

In his second year at the seminary he did his stated work, 





PULPIT AND PASTORATE 245 


but at the same time lived in another world all his own. 
The amount and range of his reading, as indicated in his 
notebooks, was hardly short of prodigious and leaves no 
place for surprise at the wideness of his literary and human 
sympathies as revealed in his preaching. It was one of the 
most prolific years in all his development. In theology, 
outside the curriculum requirements, he was reading Hook- 
er and Butler, Bushnell’s ‘‘Sermons for the New Life,” 
and Maurice’s ‘‘Theological Essays.’’ His third year at 
Alexandria brought him to the headship of a department 
which was just being organized in the seminary for the 
preparation of young men for the study of theology. His 
second essay at teaching was far more successful than his 
first. 

His first preaching also dates from this time. There was 
a small mission station not far from the seminary which 
constituted the especial preserve of the students. It seems 
to have been created for their exploitation. The patience 
of the people who endure the dissertations of homiletic 
neophytes and in spite of all appearances to the contrary 
bid them to go on is very much to their credit. These 
particular people called the young preachers practicers. 
Clinical practice is hard on the patient, but good for the 
doctor. The patient must endure in order that doctors may 
exist, otherwise he himself may not exist. In this matter 
preachers are not unlike doctors. And so the little mission 
station existed and endured, and Phillips Brooks had his 
turn there. His first attempt was rumored to have been a 
total failure. But as usual there was somebody who was 
considerate enough to advise him to try again. 


THE COURSE OF His ACTIVE MINISTRY 


At the end of a service one Sunday at the mission two 
strangers who had sat in the congregation while he preached 


246 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


came forward and offered him the Church of the Advent 
in Philadelphia. This offer he promptly accepted. He 
obtained the consent of the Bishop of Massachusetts to 
leave the diocese, an arrangement made necessary by the 
fact that he was only in deacon’s orders, and began his 
active ministry in Philadelphia on Sunday, July 10, 1859. 
So hesitant was he of the responsibility that he accepted 
the charge in the first instance for only three months, 
subject to renewal at the will of the two parties to the con- 
tract. Walking away from the church one Sunday evening 
with one of the vestrymen, he remarked that perhaps he 
would better leave at once without waiting till the three 
months were out. The vestryman had not much mind to 
dissuade him, but replied that since he had begun he would 
better stay out the time for which he was hired. The con- 
tract was renewed, and he remained for nearly two and a 
half years. 

He went over to the important Church of the Holy 
Trinity in Philadelphia in the beginning of his twenty- 
seventh year and attained an immediate and conspicuous 
success, the more obvious foundations of which had been 
laid in his preceding pastorate at the Church of the Advent 
in the same city. He now attained to a marked civic 
prominence, entered zestfully into an attractive and stimu- 
lating social life, and began to speak, particularly on 
Thanksgiving and other semicivic occasions, to a wide and 
appreciative audience. The Civil War, which was now in 
progress, raised issues which greatly excited both his 
interest and his energy and contributed not a little to 
both his intellectual and moral growth. Great occasions 
dwarf little men and exalt great men. Phillips Brooks 
so met the issues of the Civil War, whether so as always 
to command complete approval or not, that out of it he 





} 


EUEPIT AND: PASTORATE 247 


with a more masterful attitude toward all the possible issues 
of his life. He became a pronounced advocate of Negro 
suffrage, though not without a clear appreciation of the 
necessity of providing for those directly concerned the 
means of acquiring the qualifications needful to the just 
exercise of the function. His father’s protest may have 
affected, but did not change his attitude. 

He continued for nearly seven years in the Church of 
the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia, and came to Boston to 
assume the rectorship of Trinity Church on October 31, 
1869, when he was not quite thirty-four years old. Here 
he remained for twenty-two years. As in the case of Holy 
Trinity, Philadelphia, he had declined a first call and only 
accepted the second. 

All has gone well thus far. What shall the issue be in 
Boston? Unitarianism was intrenched there. When the 
Congregational Chuches had divided earlier in the century, 
the intellectual culture, the social prestige, the wealth of 
Boston had gone with the liberal side. The liberal move- 
ment had gained Harvard College and numbered among 
its adherents Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Holmes, 
and Lowell. Unitarianism had produced two great preach- 
ers—Channing and Theodore Parker. The latter had been 
preaching in Boston Music Hall nearly ten years when 
Phillips Brooks entered Harvard College. And now nearly 
twenty years more have gone by, and his prestige has not 
abated. He had promulgated the essence of the Unitarian 
position that divine revelation must be submitted to the 
tribunal of human reason. Reason and not revelation was 
the final arbiter. And now what course is Brooks going to 
take? The Unitarians are ready to claim him. Had he 
not been born and baptized a Unitarian? Was not his fine 
culture a Unitarian product? Might not his fine gifts be 
captured, if not ecclesiastically at least potentially, for the 


248 PRINCES OF THE ‘CHRISTIAN 


cause of Unitarianism? Even the Orthodox were a little 
anxious. ‘‘The Unitarians watched him to see whether 
he were Orthodox, and the Orthodox were curious to see 
whether he were a Unitarian in disguise.”’ But everybody 
went to hear him preach, Unitarians and all. The Uni- 
tarian paper published in the city protested, but to no pur- 
pose. The popular verdict was decidedly in his favor, and 
that verdict is not always wrong. But it is more important 
to know on what foundation he is going to build his Boston 
ministry. Gloriously did he afterwards give the answer, 
but that answer is not yet known. Is he going to conquer 
Boston, or is Boston going to conquer him? It was an 
hour in the history of Christianity as well as in the history 
of Christian preaching in Boston, and in wider circles far 
beyond. And Christ and Brooks were to conquer. His 
conquest of Boston, and it came to be complete, may be 
regarded as the greatest achievement of his public ministry. 
For the man who could do this would be equal to any of 
the other tasks which even such a ministry as his might 
impose upon him. 

There was a wiser ordering of the course of his ministry 
on his coming to Boston. Something of the reformer and 
agitator had appeared in his Philadelphia ministry. But 
now he held closer to his pulpit, and there he built him a 
throne from which he ruled the city. He did not forego 
his interest in great public questions, nor cease to declare 
his convictions concerning them, but with something of 
the genius which always marks a great preacher he recog- 
nized the supremacy of the claims of Christian preaching. 
The holy city must come down from God out of heaven, 
and only the Christian evangel can create it upon the earth. 
More than this, his very temperament constrained him to 
a constructive concentration upon the work of his pulpit. 
There, and nowhere else, did he utter himself to the full 


PeLEY AND PASTORATE 249 


and without reserve. The cloak of reserve which he wore’ 
elsewhere he there cast off and gave up the secrets of 
his soul. Even so he did it not so much by the detailed 
recital of personal experiences as by communicating him- 
self through his speech. ‘“‘It may be doubted,” says Dr. 
A. V. G. Allen, his approved biographer, ‘‘if in this respect 
he was ever surpassed in the history of preaching.”’ 

A great achievement of his Boston ministry was the 
erection of the magnificent new Trinity Church, and of the 
acquisition through the augmented opportunity thus af- 
forded of a still wider and more permanent influence. 
For four years during the construction of this church the 
services of the congregation were held in Huntington Hall; 
but his presence and preaching there transformed a place 
of secular assembly into a cathedral, and his ministry in 
surmounting the natural disadvantages of his surround- 
ings became at once broader and more deeply spiritual. 
Here Principal Tulloch, of the University of Aberdeen, 
heard him and wrote home to his wife: ‘I never heard 
preaching like it. So much thought and so much life com- 
bined; such a reach of mind and such a depth and insight 
of soul. I was electrified. I could have got up and 
shouted.” 

Closing an account of the effect of one of a series of mid- 
day addresses to business men in the old Trinity Church, 
New York, during the Lenten season of 1890, which came 
near the end of his Boston pastorate, one of the great news- 
papers of the city said: ‘‘As he finished his address he 
stopped for a moment and looked over the pulpit at that 
vast throng crowding the aisle beneath with upturned 
faces, listening for every word which came from his lips. 
When he turned to descend from the pulpit, the throng 
still stood there as though controlled by his presence and 
power, even after he had departed from the place where he 


250 PRINCES OF “THE CHRIS iis 


had uttered these words of wisdom in a manner which 
seemed almost inspired.’’ What most impressed his New 
York audiences seems to have been the torrential power 
of his utterance, a burning passion of delivery, as if born of 
the consuming convictions of his heart. Likewise a new 
power of utterance was noted by his Boston audiences at 
this stage of his ministry. 

No account of his Boston pastorate could claim to be 
complete if there were an omission of his ministry to the 
students of Harvard College. They came to him in large 
numbers in his church in Boston, and he reached them 
through his services in the Episcopal Theological Seminary 
in Cambridge and in Appleton Chapel at the college itself. 
It was as if he had gathered all students into a school of 
high purpose and resolve and had by their choice become 
their head. The theological seminaries of Boston and 
vicinity felt his influence profoundly. This was notably 
true of Andover, of Cambridge, of the Divinity School of 
Boston University, of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
Through the character of the man and his preaching the 
status of the Christian ministry was raised to a distinctly 
higher level in the minds of all thoughtful young men who 
came within the range of his influence. Speaking on a 
stated occasion to the students of Harvard College on the 
claims of the ministry, he went on calmly for a while, and 
then burst forth into his true tone and said: ‘‘I can’t come 
here and talk to you of the ministry as one of the profes- 
sions. I must tell you that it is the noblest and most 
glorious calling to which a man can give himself.’’ ‘‘One 
was almost afraid,’’ remarked one of his auditors, ‘‘that the 
whole body of young men would rise on the impulse and 
cry: ‘Here am I, send me!’”’ 

His profound and unfailing interest in young men and 
the ministry was once most graciously testified to the 


EUEPI TT OAN DmPASTORATE 251 


author of these lines. When I had scarcely begun my own 
ministry I read his ‘‘Yale Lectures on Preaching.’’ How 
the book was brought to my attention I cannot now recall. 
I knew very little of Phillips Brooks. But I procured that 
book, my own new copy of it, and sat down to read it. I 
never read another book with such glad surprise in my life. 
No other book ever so stirred the depths of my nature. 
When I had finished it I could not contain myself, but 
arose from my seat and walked the floor. At length I 
calmed myself and yielded to an impulse to endeavor to 
express my appreciation to the author. I wrote him a 
simple note telling him that I was a young man just be- 
ginning my work in the ministry of the Methodist Episco- 
pal Church, South, and that I could not refrain from tell- 
ing him how deeply grateful I was to him for the inspira- 
tion his book had brought me. I did not once think that I 
should hear from him. He was then Bishop of Massachu- 
setts, and I had addressed him at Boston. He wastravel- 
ing in Europe, and I did not know it. My letter reached 
him there, and this was his answer: 


My Dear Brother: Your note has followed me across the ocean, and I 
have just received it here. I am thankful indeed if any of my words have 
seemed to you to be wise or helpful. There can be no greater privilege 
than to lend any inspiration to those who are to be the inspirers of men. 
May every blessing come to your ministry and will you believe me always, 

Your sincere friend, PHILLIPS BROOKS. 


The letter was written in his own hand and was post- 
marked Interlaken, Switzerland, August 21, 1892. 

More and more, as time drew on, the greatness of the 
ministry grasped the man, and the man in his greatness 
grasped the ministry. Momentarily he felt theattraction 
of other pursuits. But he was never drawn away until his 
life was nearly done, and then only to the bishopric. He 
felt keenly the need of more time for study than he could 


252 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTA 


find in the pastorate and thought he might find it else- 
where; and this inclined him to turn aside when without 
his seeking the opportunity came. But in the end the pas- 
torate would win. He was invited to a chair in the Phila- 
delphia Divinity School and declined. He was asked to 
become the head of the new Episcopal Theological Semi- 
nary at Cambridge and declined. He was invited to ac- 
cept the position of preacher to Harvard University and 
professor of Christian Ethics and declined. He was elected 
Assistant Bishop of Pennsylvania and declined. Many 
important offers which involved no permanent or even 
temporary relinquishment of his pulpit were likewise de- 
clined. This was to him the pearl of great price, and he 
sold all else that he might buy it. 


PREEMINENCE AS A PREACHER 


Phillips Brooks has been preéminently a quickener of 
preachers and a prolific source of homiletic stimulus. 

1. Both in the fashioning of his character and in the 
accomplishment of his career he was distinctively a preach- 
er. The Master Craftsman who fashions the tools of his- 
tory made him to be a preacher. Many have variously 
found their distinguishing talents and achievements to lie 
in different fields of endeavor. MHistory itself finds a true 
law of economy and of design here and here alone. By 
preéminence both of endowment and achievement Homer 
and Shakespeare, Milton and Tennyson were poets. 
Thucydides was a historian. Newton was a natural philoso- 
pher. Faraday was a scientist. Macaulay was a literary 
genius. Washington was both soldier and statesman just 
at that needful epoch in history when a new species of 
state was coming into existence. Woodrow Wilson was 
a political seer. In all these distinctive spheres a man may 
serve God and mankind if he will. In so doing both he 


i oa 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 253 


and his service make a distinct contribution to the progress 
of history. 

Now, Phillips Brooks was distinctively a preacher, as 
distinctively a preacher as Alfred Tennyson was distinc- 
tively a poet. All that poetry gains by such a man as Ten- 
nyson Christian preaching gains by such a man as Brooks. 
The contribution is so distinct that the thing itself stands 
out as more distinct ever after. All the possibilities of 
Christian preaching as a career are concentrated and 
crystallized in such a man. No higher service can any 
man render to the progress of the highest life on this planet. 
Matthew Arnold said John Wesley had ‘‘a genius for godli- 
ness.’ So he had, if ever man had. Phillips Brooks had 
it too. And he had a genius for preaching. That accounts 
for our being unable to throw all his qualities into the scales 
and get their exact relative weight. He possessed that rare 
combination of qualities which defies a too strict analysis. 
Who could ever analyze a perfect peach? Its highest 
qualities are elusive. It has bulk and color and flavor. 
But who can assign the precise measure and sources of 
these qualities? One speaks of “‘the magnificent presence”’ 
of Phillips Brooks, ‘the commanding stature, the flashing 
eye, the sympathetic voice vibrant with emotion, the swift 
imagination, and the wonderful faculty of massing words 
till their very volume became the fit vehicle of the rushing 
thoughts.’’ He had all these. But when you take them to 
pieces they are not Phillips Brooks. It was the way God 
put them together and the way he himself took and used 
them that made him what he was. 

And yet there were in him qualities and gifts which, 
whether taken separately or in their rare combination, lie 
open to our observation and study. If we may not grasp 
at least the skirts of the great, how shall we ourselves ever 
be great? 


254 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


2. Both the qualities and gifts of his mind and heart 
designated him under God to the work of the Christian 
ministry. He possessed preéminent pastoral and preaching 
qualities and gifts. 

(1) His apprehension of Christ was a gift both of his 
mind and his heart and made a great contribution to both 
the quality and capacity of the man. Or should we say 
Christ’s apprehension of him? He could not otherwise 
have thought of it himself. ‘‘To know that long before I 
cared for him,”’ said he in his sermon on ‘‘The Priority of 
God,’ from the text, We love him because he first loved us— 
‘“‘to know that long before I cared for him, he cared for 
me; that while I wandered up and down in carelessness, 
perhaps while I was plunging deep in flagrant sin, God’s 
eye was never off me fora moment. He was always watch- 
ing for the instant when his hand might touch me and his 
voice might speak to me—there is nothing which can ap- 
_ peal to a man like that. . . . When, touched by the 
knowledge of that untiring love, a man gives himself at 
last to God, every act of loving service which he does after- 
wards is fired and colored by the power of gratitude, sur- 
prised gratitude, out of which it springs. How shall he 
overtake this love which has so much the start of him?”’ 

He was not given to speaking of his personal religious 
experience. But in the maturity of his years and power 
there came to him from a young clergyman a letter asking 
to know the secret of his life. For once at least he lifted 
the veil of the most secret orisons of his soul and replied 
as follows: ‘“‘I am sure you will not think that I dream that 
I have any secret totell. . . . Indeed, the more 1 
have thought it over, the less in some sense I have seemed 
to have to say. And yet the more sure it has seemed to me 
that these last years have had a peace and fullness which 
there did not use to be. I say it in deep reverence and 


BevEir vAND PASTORATE 255 


humility. I do not think it is the mere quietness of ad- 
vancing age. I am sure it is not indifference to anything 
which I used to care for. I am sure that it is a deeper 
knowledge and truer love of Christ. . . . All experi- 
ence comes to be but more and more a pressure of his life 
on ours. It cannot come by one flash of light or one great 
convulsive event. It comes without haste and without 
rest in this perpetual living of our life with him. ‘ 
I cannot tell you how personal this grows to me. He is 
here. He knows me and I know him. It is no figure of 
speech. It is the realest thing in the world. And every 
day makes it realer. And one wonders with delight what 
it will grow to as the years go on. Less and less, I think, 
grows the consciousness of seeking God. Greater and 
greater grows the certainty that he is seeking us and giving 
himself to us to the complete measure of our present capaci- 
ty. That is Love—not that we loved him but that he loved 
us.” He almost repents that he has thus spoken, and 
concludes: ‘‘I have written fully and will not even read 
over what I have written, lest I should be led to repent 
that I have written so much about myself. I am not in 
the habit of doing so. But your letter moves me, and you 
will understand.’”” Any man’s apprehension of Christ is 
at its best but Christ’s apprehension of him. 

(2) The loftiness of the integrity of his soul was at once 
a quality and a gift, a basic quality on which he built and 
a gift of his soul in its undiscouraged outreach for yet 
loftier things. This gave altitude and loftiness both to the 
man and his ministry. The great and singular thing about 
his preaching was that he first went up to God in his own 
high quest and then lifted the people up with him. Dr. 
Lyman Abbott, who knew them both well, was asked the 
difference between Henry Ward Beecher and Phillips 
Brooks as preachers. Beecher, he said, was the greater 


256 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


preacher; but Brooks was the greater prophet. ‘It always 
seemed to me,” he said, ‘‘as I listened to Phillips Brooks 
that he had his head in the clouds, he was seeing a vision, 
and I felt the strong impulse lifting me to his great alti- 
tude.’”’ He came down in his sympathies to the people and 
took all their infirmities for his own; but there was no 
descent in the sublimity of his principles or even in the 
loftiness of his utterance. There is too much talk of adapt- 
ing the gospel when it is only meant. that preaching is 
accommodating itself to lower demands. Men after all do 
not so much want preaching that lowers itself as preaching 
that lifts them. Blessed is the man, then, who gives lofti- 
ness and altitude to preaching as Phillips Brooks was so 
conspicuously able todo. It was clear enough in his preach- 
ing that ‘‘he was making some mighty effort of the will to 
lift his hearers to his own high attitude, even while he re- 
sorted to no sensational efforts, and seemed to trust entirely 
to the spoken word of truth.” 

He made his conquest of Boston, and that not by sensa- 
tion, claptrap, or compromise, but by the sheer force and 
power of the man and his preaching. Compare his printed 
sermons with some of the popular sermons put out to-day. 
Does not the comparison issue in a contrast? What was 
in his sermons? and what is in these? How long can men 
go in the strength of his meat? and how long in the strength 
of these? Must not a preacher at last be judged as a poet 
has been wisely said to be judged—in three dimensions? 
Has he length—how long is he remembered? Has he 
breadth—how widely is he read? Has he depth—how © 
vitally is he felt? 

(3) There attended upon the loftiness of the integrity 
of his soul, as an admirable counterpart, the lowliness of the 
attitudes of his soul. There was in him the power of broad 
and tender sympathies. He had convictions, but was in- 





ee 


mEeULPIT AND PASTORATE 200 


tolerant only of wrong and compromise. He had pride, 
_ but no arrogance. He would not seclude himself from any. 
-It was a rule of his ministry that the man who wanted to 
see him was the man he wanted to see. He went to men 


who wanted him, and men who wanted him came to him. 
A workingman who lived in one of the suburbs of Boston 
learned at the hospital that he must undergo a dangerous 
operation. He went home to tell his wife. The operation 
was scheduled for the next day. Forebodings with respect 
to the outcome burdened their hearts, and they resolved 
to go to see Phillips Brooks, whom they did not know and 
on whom they had not the slightest formal claim. He 
received them most graciously, greatly comforted their 
hearts, and promised to be with them at the hospital the 
next day. 

Chancellor James R. Day, of Syracuse University, 
writing of him, said: “‘The scholar said, ‘He is of us,’ and 
the unlettered said, ‘He is of us.’ The poor said, ‘He is of 
us,’ and the rich said, ‘He is of us.’ To the young he was 
full of mirth and buoyancy; to the troubled he was a man 
deeply acquainted with grief. All men, of all classes and 
conditions, claimed him, because in his magnificent heart 
and sympathy he seemed to be all men, and to enter into 
their disappointments and into their successes, and to make 
them his own. This was rare genius. This was large ca- 
pacity.” It is related that two Roman Catholic women 
lived in Salem. While one of them bemoaned the fact that 
her boy was falling into evil ways, the other confidently 
proposed to her that she should carry the boy to Phillips 
Brooks. A poor woman who scrubbed the floors of Trinity 
church came to him about the marriage of her daughter 
and wanted to know if they might have the chapel for the 


ceremony. ‘‘Why not take the church?” said he. “But 
17 


258 PRINCES: OF (THE (CHRISETAmS 


that is not for the likes of me,” said the woman. ‘‘O yes, 
but it zs for the likes of you,”’ he said. 

His attitude toward children was childlike in its sim- 
plicity and effectiveness. When Bishop Lawrence followed 
him in the diocese of Massachusetts, one of the most insistent 
questions he encountered was from the children when they 
asked him: ‘‘Why do you not talk to us as Bishop Brooks 
did?’’ It seems but natural to have expected that he should 
be an effective pastor and preacher to children. A memora- 
ble incident of his ministry was his guidance of Helen Keller, 
the noted Alabama girl, whose gifts of patience and courage 
and natural ability so signally triumphed over the seeming- 
ly insurmountable obstacles of blinded eyes and a speech- 
less tongue into the light of the knowledge of God. “I 
knew about God before you told me,” she said, ‘‘only I 
did not know his name.” 

To youth no less than to children he possessed this fine 
gift of ministry. Speaking on the text, ‘Thou 
makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth,” he utters 
this striking passage: “‘It is when some great trouble comes 
to you—the death of your friend, the failure of your business, 
the prospect of your death—then it is that you are dismayed 
to find that under the changed habits of your life you are 
the same man still, and that the sins of your college days 
are in you even now. This is what makes men dread any 
great event in life so strangely. It brings back the past 
which they want to forget, or rather it compels them to 
see that the past is still there in the present. It is when 
you fire a cannon over the pond that the dead body which 
is sunk there rises.” | 

(4) There wasin the man and his ministry a superlatively 
effective combination of passionate and contagious con- 
viction and passionate and courageous utterance. He had 
great depth of conviction and the ability to enforce his 








PULPIT AND: PASTORATE 259 


convictions through the power of his utterance. ‘‘ Physical- 
ly, mentally, spiritually, he is colossal, we know,” said Dr. 
Charles Parkhurst, the great editor of Zion’s Herald, Boston, 
‘but there are lines of easy characterization, which every 
clergyman, intently aspiring to do his best, should note. 
With great strength there are great infirmities. Such is 
usually the case. We mean as a preacher. He has none 
of the arts or finish of the modern pulpiteer. He would 
have a hard time candidating before the esthetic standards 
of modern congregations. He is a cruel iconoclast of cleri- 
cal elegance, style, and regularity. Evidently he does not 
think much of these collaterals, of which so much is usually 
made. He is too intent upon giving expression to a great, 
overmastering purpose to tarry and become artificial on 
these incidentals. He is great in spite of his infirmities, 
for such they are. Voice is not resonant, enunciation is not 
clear, his speech has the rapidity of the mountain torrent. 
He frequently misses the word wanted, and sometimes 
flounders in his rhetoric in going back for it. He seldom 
looks his audience in the eye, but most of his time turns 
his gaze toward the sounding board above his head. Look- 
ing at him close, it seems as if his eyes were turned back 
in upon himself in his agonized quest to give you the best 
he could reach in his reflective soul. Gestures are infre- 
quent and usually awkward. Often he stood with both 
hands clinched within his surplice upon his breast, as men 
sometimes take hold of the lapels of their coats. Nay, 
Phillips Brooks would not be satisfactory to the fastidious 
and exacting congregations who look microscopically for 
the man who is just so regular, finished, and ‘nice.’”” In 
a similar strain Archdeacon Farrar wrote of him in the 
Independent: “As a preacher, he is marked by a certain 
fervid impetuosity, which reminds the hearer of an express 
train sweeping all minor obstacles out of its path in its 


260 PRINCES "OF THE CHRis REA 


headlong rush. His utterance is exceptionally rapid. He 
speaks many more words in a minute than our most 
rapid orators, and reduces reporters to absolute despair. 
This is so far a defect that it is exceedingly difficult for the 
hearer to keep pace with the sequence of his thoughts, 
conveyed, as they often are, in language of great beauty. 

He is thoughtful, plain-spoken, fearless, essential- 
ly manful, and entirely alien from the petty tricks and 
intrigues which are too often visible in the favorites and 
fuglemen of parties.’’ Two critics more capable than these 
could scarcely be called to testify as to the manner of the 
man and his preaching. Dr. Farrar suggested to him that 
he should be more deliberate in speech, but he replied that 
it was not possible. The conclusion can hardly be escaped 
that he had all along attached too little importance to the 
manner of delivery. But the power of excitation which he 
had over an audience none was ever found to dispute. 
His power of stirring and lifting an audience was hardly 
less noticeable in prayer than in preaching. At a service 
held at Harvard in 1865 commemorative of the men of 
Harvard who had died in the war, he was on the program for 
the prayer. He was still young, and comparatively un- 
known to many in the audience. At least one distinguished 
man afterwards confessed that he was surprised to see his 
name on the program, for he had never heard of him. 
But that prayer lifted the audience and bore it away 
from all the bitter memories of war to anticipations of the 
everlasting peace which dwells in the land where war shall 
be no more. Dr. William R. Huntington, rector of Grace 
Church, New York, afterwards said that all the circum- 
stances of the occasion had faded from his memory except 
the prayer. “All that I discern,” said he, ‘‘is the image of 
Brooks, standing in his black gown in the pulpit of the 
old Harvard Square Church where commencement exer- 


PUGET EP OANDGPASTORATE 261 


cises were wont in those days to be held, his great head 
thrown back, his face looking as if it might be Stephen’s 
while there went forth from his lips a fiery stream of thanks- 
giving and supplication the like of which I never knew.” 

His expenditure of emotion in the pulpit was tremendous, 
and this, along with the fervor of his utterance and com- 
bining with it, subjected him to a great strain. Preaching 
came to him at a very high cost. His very life went out 
of him in the effort. The strain was so great upon himself 
that it imposed a strain upon both the attention and sym- 
pathy of the hearer, but neither minded it if only the great 
ends of his ministry might be accomplished. 

He greatly admired men of courage and great adventure 
and cultivated courage in himself by the courage which 
he admired in others. His own soul grew and was nurtured 
by his admirations. Martin Luther, Oliver Cromwell, 
Abraham Lincoln, and even Mohammed, greatly interested 
him. Carlyle’s ‘Heroes and Hero Worship” was, says 
Dr. Allen, one of his manuals. In this matter he was doubt- 
less moved by conscious or unconscious hunger for a cour- 
age which was not altogether native to his disposition. 
He was naturally subject to serious depressions of spirit. 
“The difficulty he surmounted in overcoming his natural 
reserve contributed to the development of his courage.” 
This was one of the ways in which he learned to abound. 
He overcame reserve, so far as the great demands of his 
ministry were concerned, and he overcame depression and 
became a great cheerer of others. “It was a dull rainy 
day,’ said a Boston paper, “‘when things looked dark and 
lowering, but Phillips Brooks came down through News- 
paper Row and all was bright.’”’ Into the experience of 
how many lives through the wide range of his ministry of 
sympathy and courage he translated the lines of Shake- 
speare’s fine sonnet who can tell? 


262 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


‘“‘When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, 
I all alone beweep my outcast state, 
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, 
And look upon myself, and curse my fate, 
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d, 
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope, 
With what I most enjoy contented least; 
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, 
Haply I think on thee, and then my state, 
Like to the lark at break of day arising 
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate.” 


(5) A profound sense of the value of the human soul 
constituted the central and commanding motive of his 
ministry. This is but to say that his Yale Lectures on 
Preaching are an exhibition of the motives and method of 
his own ministry. That great series reaches its climax 
in the last lecture on ‘‘The Value of the Human Soul.” 
The realization of that value he says is a power which lies 
at the center of all success in preaching. It is the central 
motive around which all others stand. It rescues the 
preaching of the gospel from a certain feeling of incon- 
gruity which might otherwise attach to it and gives an 
object worthy of the transcendent facts of Christ’s incarna- 
tion and atonement. It constitutes a deep reserve of pleas- 
ure in the ministry and is the secret of fellowship therein. 
As it lies the deepest as a motive, so it lasts the longest. 
It is difficult to win and to keep in our time because of the 
tendency of philosophy to emphasize the natural order 
and of philanthropy to emphasize man’s material well- 
being. But it must be acquired and preserved, and there 
are methods of doing so. It is learned, first of all, through 
the preacher’s experience of God’s grace in his own soul. 
All the preacher’s theology should be colored with this 
sense of the soul’s value. And it 1s in particular to be 
learned by working for the soul. “If ever in your ministry 





'; 
iN 
th 





eel AND PASTORATE 263 


the souls of those committed to your care grow dull before 
you, and you doubt whether they have any such value that 
you should give your life for them, go out and work for 
them; and as you work their value shall grow clear to you. 
Go and try to save a soul and you will see how well it is 
worth saving, how capable it is of the most complete salva- 
tion. Not by pondering upon it, nor by talking of it, but 
by serving it you learn its preciousness. . . . And 
so the Christian, living and dying for his brethren’s souls, 
learns the value of those souls for which Christ lived and 
died.’’ One can but wonder what he himself learned of the 
preciousness of the soul in saving the soul of Helen Keller. 
(6) We may pass over his homiletic method without a 
too closely detailed consideration, interesting and instruc- 
tive as that undoubtedly would be. The genesis of the 
sermon was almost invariably found in his notebook. 
Dr. Arthur S. Hoyt regards his use of notebooks as “‘ proba- 
bly the most striking revelation of his biography.’ Cer- 
tainly in his hands it proved to be an unusually fruitful - 
homiletic method. The mornings of Monday and Tuesday 
he devoted to the gathering of his material, though he 
seems to have worked rather casually on Monday and to 
have avoided putting himself under any strain. Wednesday 
morning he gave to the writing out of the plan of the ser- 
mon. He considered that the hardest part of his work 
had been done when he had completed the plan. On 
Thursday and Friday mornings he wrote out the sermon 
in full. As a matter of course he did not do all this every 
week, nor for the full length of his ministerial life. But 
this was his approved and tested method. He was not a 
prolific sermon writer, but accomplished his work by pro- 
longed effort. ‘‘Tried to finish sermon, but with no suc- 
cess.’’ It is both a comfort and an instruction to find this 
put down in the handwriting of Phillips Brooks. | 


264 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


His extemporaneous sermons were prepared in the same 
way, up to the point where the writing in full began. ‘‘Al- 
ways there was the plan elaborated and written out and 
afterwards filed for future reference.’’ From the begin- 
ning he had practiced this mode of speech. He had em- 
ployed it usually at his Wednesday evening service in 
Philadelphia, and infrequently on other occasions. It 
would necessarily come into more frequent use in his later 
life. And never was he more effective than in this form 
of speech. Dr. Weir Mitchell, a personal friend, and a 
parishioner in Philadelphia, said that ‘‘as an extemporane- 
ous speaker he was simply matchless.’’ It is recorded that 
in the year 1890 he wrote but six sermons. 

What we may not pass over without due consideration 
is the fact that he had a method, a method which he had 
carefully wrought out according to the requirements of 
his own mind and habit; and that in the use of this method 
he worked with a diligence and a constancy of application 
which has proved itself to be beyond either the aim or the 
accomplishment of many a lesser man. ‘‘Make your own 
methods,” said he. ‘Be truly independent. Do what is 
best for you. . . . Besure that your methods come out 
of your own nature and are not the result of mere accident. 

Let them be noble, for large ideals and sacred 
purposes, and not minute conveniences. . . . Let 
them be broad, not narrow and minute, with plenty of 
room to fill out and grow.’’ Both the method and the man 
must grow. For what after all are homiletic aptitudes 
and homiletic method without concentration upon the 
homiletic task? ‘‘A good poet’s made, as well as born.”’ 
A good preacher is made, as well as born. No gift or power 
must be allowed to ‘‘fust in him unused.” “Phillips 
Brooks was always thinking of his work, always preparing 
to preach.’”’ His preaching had its altitudes in his profound 


PULPIT AND: PASTORATE 265 


apprehension of Christ, in the loftiness of the integrity 
of his own soul, in the magnitude of his appreciation of 
the value of the human soul, in the masterful courage, 
which first conquered his own selfhood, and thence easily 
passed to the conquest of others. It had its breadth in the 
universally beneficent attitudes of his own soul, in the 
wideness of his human sympathies and literary culture, in 
the kinship of his soul with the human soul in all the height 
and breadth and depth of its need and its sorrow here, in 
his profound belief in the nearness of God to that soul. 
It had much of its timeliness, its finish and effectiveness, 
in the care and diligence with which he devoted himself 
to the preparation of his sermons. 


Last Days 


On April 30, 1891, the diocesan convention of the Epis- 
copal Church in Massachussetts elected Phillips Brooks a 
bishop. His election, according to the fixed procedure, re- 
quired to be confirmed by a majority of the standing com- 
mittees of the several dioceses and then by a majority of 
the bishops. It seems strange, and yet not so strange, 
that there should have been difficulty in this matter in 
the case of Phillips Brooks. He had expressed strong dis- 
belief in the idea of apostolic succession in its use as a theory 
to support what is called the historic episcopate. ‘‘Have 
you read Lightfoot’s ‘Commentary on Philippians’?”’ 
he said in a letter. ‘Do get it and read the ‘Essay on the 
Christian Ministry.’ It does seem to me to finish the Apos- 
tolic Succession Theory completely.”” When Bishop Cum- 
mins of Kentucky went out to lead in the formation of 
the Reformed Episcopal Church he wrote: ‘‘And what do 
you think about Cummins? What a panic it must make 
among the bishops to know that a stray parson is round 
with a true bit of their genuine succession, perfectly and 


266 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


indisputably the thing, which he can give to anybody that 
he pleases! Nothing like it since the powwow among 
the gods when Prometheus stole the fire.’”’ Again, when 
the conflict waxed over his confirmation, he wrote: ‘‘I do 
not believe the doctrine of apostolical succession, and I 
am sure that Lyman Abbott has the right to preach the 
gospel.’’ It must be admitted that this attitude did make 
it a little hard for the bishops who did believe strongly in 
what the bishop-elect had called a fiction. There was also 
some question raised about his doctrinal soundness. He 
had never disdained dogma; and he certainly was not shy 
of miracles. Nevertheless the charge was vaguely and ir- 
responsibly made that ‘“‘he deemed the miracle to be un- 
important and in the life of Christ unessential.’’ Dr. 
Brooks would say nothing himself; nor would he authorize 
anybody else to say anything on his behalf. His high- 
toned and self-respecting manliness hardly ever appeared 
to better advantage than when he refused so much as to 
crook his finger to be made a bishop. The opposition, so 
far as it was entitled to any notice at all, had been made 
“thoroughly upon the ground of admitted facts,’ and he 
would let it take its course. Every effort to induce him 
either to apologize or to explain utterly failed, and he stood 
unmoved. A procedure which usually consumes six weeks 
required in his case ten; but at length the confirmation of 
his election was made known. 

Such a man as Phillips Brooks could hardly gain greatly 
in either power or influence by being made a bishop. There 
was a greater probability that he would decline in power if 
not in influence. The danger in such a change of status 
as was involved is a well-known fortuity of human char- 
acter. James Bryce, afterwards British Ambassador to 
America, was glad of his election, but sounded a warning: 
‘“‘T hope the duties of an active kind may not, as happens 








-PULPIT AND PASTORATE 267 


with bishops here, trench too heavily on the time you have 
hitherto given to reading and thinking; for even the au- 
thority the office gives to guide Church deliberations might 
be ill purchased by the loss of quiet times.’”’ He was 
crowned with felicitations and lavishly furnished with 
advice; but sat very tranquilly to both the one and the 
other. The work of a parish minister had become very 
burdensome to him, and for relief from this, at least, he 
was thankful. He proved to be a better administrator 
than many had supposed he would ever be; and he was 
diligent and devoted in the discharge of the duties of the 
diocese. But he had only a little more than fifteen months 
in the office. 

He had an illness in January of the year before he died 
from which he made but an indifferent recovery. On the 
Saturday morning of January 14, 1893, he caught cold at 
a Church service where he preached, and on this account 
should have stayed in on Sunday; but he kept his engage- 
ments for the day and suffered a good deal of exposure and 
fatigue. He was out again on Tuesday evening and made 
an official visit toa Church in Boston, where he preached 
his last sermon. He was out again on Wednesday, and in 
the evening made his last speech, though with great dif- 
ficulty. He was suffering from a severe sore throat, but the 
doctor who attended him took a favorable view of the case. 
He did not get out again and his throat became greatly 
swollen. Other doctors were called in, but still there was 
no alarm. He did not seem so well on Sunday, but as late 
as eight o’clock in the evening the doctor thought he would 
have a good night and expected to find him better in the 
morning. But late at night the doctors were called. They 
examined his lungs and found them sound, but suspected 
diptheretic trouble. A closer examination of his throat 


68 PRINCES OF THE PULPIT | 


was appointed for nine o’clock in the morning, but about 
three hours earlier he suddenly died. 

His faithful and devoted servant gave this account of 
his last hours: ‘‘Last night Mr. William (his brother) and 
the doctor came, and the doctor said Mr. Brooks would 
be better in the morning; but by the looks of him I thought 
he wouldn’t. After they left him I went to his room at 
about eleven o’clock to see if he wanted anything. He 
told me to leave some lemonade near him and go to bed. 
I told him I meant to sit up. He looked at his watch on 
the table by his bed and said: ‘No, Katie, I won’t need you. 
It’s late, and you must go to bed.’ But it wasn’t to bed I 
was going and he looking like that. So I sat in a chair 
outside his door. Some time after I heard him walking 
about and talking to himself. I opened the door, and 
there he was walking about in his room, and saying over 
and over: ‘Take me home; I must go home!’ I was that 
frightened that I sent a messenger for Mr. William. Ina 
little while he came with the doctor and a nurse, and they 
stayed with him till he died in the morning.”’ Many great 
tributes of admiration and devotion were paid to the man 
and his memory from round the ample ranges of the world; 
but I doubt not that Phillips Brooks himself preferred these 
unaffected words tothemall. This kind of devotion, evoked 
by the power of Christ’s redeeming grace, is what the angels 
desire to look into. 


alia 


XI 


JOSEPH PARKER 
(1830-1902) 


A CONSTELLATION OF CONTEMPORARIES 





JosEPH PARKER had his own place in a conspicuously 
brilliant British pulpit. His more eminent contemporaries 
were Canon Liddon, Canon Farrar, Dean Stanley, Dean 
Vaughan, Bishop Lightfoot, and Dean Church among the 
Church of England preachers; Dr. Henry Allon, Dr. 
Thomas Binney, and Dr. R. W. Dale among the Congre- 
gationalists; Charles H. Spurgeon, Dr. Alexander McLaren, 
and Dr. John Clifford among the Baptists; Morley Punshon 
and Hugh Price Hughes among the Methodists; Donald 
Fraser among the Presbyterians; and last, but by no means 
least, John Henry Newman among the Roman Catholics. 
One is almost constrained to ask, What has become of the 
great preachers? Where are the occupants of pulpit 
thrones? Where are the preachers who speak to the na- 
tion? When Dr. J. H. Jowett, under pressure of the con- 
viction that he ought to be in his own land while the world 
was under the terrific strain of war, returned from the Fifth 
Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York to a Church 
in London Prime Minister David Lloyd George made the 
principal address at a dinner party given in Dr. Jowett’s 
honor by Sir Joseph Compton-Rickett and Sir Albert 
Spicer at the House of Commons. To the distinguished 
company gathered for the occasion he gave this remarkable 
reminiscence: “‘I remember when I came up, as a young 
man, to London a great many years ago—I dare not think 
how many. On Sunday morning I went to hear Mr. 

(269) 


270 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTA 


Spurgeon, in the afternoon I went to hear Canon Liddon, 
and in the evening I heard Dr. Parker. Those were the 
days when you could have heard Dean Stanley, Canon 
Farrar, Morley Punshon, and Hugh Price Hughes. You 
might also have heard Dr. Dale and Dr. McLaren. Just 
think of that! What a race of giants! They have all 
passed away. There have been very serious gaps in the 
ranks of our great preachers, and we cannot afford that one 
of them should leave our shores. The loss of a great preach- 
er is almost an irreparable loss, and I feel that we have 
achieved something that was worth a great effort in get- 
ting one of the greatest of them back amongst us.’”’ When 
Dean Church died, the eminent English essayist, Mr. 
Richard Holt Hutton, wrote in a similar strain: ‘‘One 
after another, the great men of our Church disappear, and 
their places are not filled. Within a single year the Bishop 
of Durham, Canon Liddon, and Dean Church have all 
passed away, and we hardly know to which of the three the 
Church has owed the most.’’ Not a great while before his 
death Sir William Robertson Nicoll expressed in the 
British Weekly the opinion that hardly importance enough 
was attached to the possession by the Church of preachers 
of dominant character and ability. He doubted whether 
the Church of England possessed at the time many such 
men as Canon Liddon and Father Stanton. And among 
the Nonconformists he did not find easy successors ‘to 
Spurgeon and Parker, one of whom he had found speaking 
on each side of the river when he himself came to London. 
Still he was just enough to say that it had to be remem- 
bered ‘‘that we never have had many great preachers at 
one time.’”’ ‘‘It has to be remembered also,” he continued, 
‘that many preachers not known to every one are doing 
magnificent and successful work.” It is, of course, not by 
great preachers alone that the world is to be saved. But 





; 
r 
i 


Pee bel N De PASTORATE Zit 


it is rather a commonplace, if not degenerate, time when 
great preachers in the truly Christian sense are not recog- 
nized as one of the greatest assets of the Church. This is 
one of the gifts of God to her which surely the Church 
should covet. And she does well to cherish the memory 
of such as she has had. 


A STUDY IN ADVERSITY 


Joseph Parker did not come into this goodly company 
of his contemporaries by any preordained or inherited 
right. He won his position by stern contention. His 
early career constitutes a study in adversity. He was born 
at Hexham-on-Tyne on April 9, 1830. There he lived for 
twenty-two years, until he broke through his limitations 
and found himself in London. His father was a stonemason 
and was such a character as to extort from his.son the fol- 
lowing description: “A strange figure, that old stone 
squarer, both as man and master; with the strength of two 
men and the will of ten; fierce and gentle, with passionate- 
ness burning to madness, yet with deepest love of prayer; 
no namby-pamby speaker weighing words in Troy scales 
and mincing syllables as if afraid of them; hating lies as 
he hated hell itselfi—with him every known man was an 
angel or a fiend—a lie was no slip of the tongue, it was 
notorious, scandalous, diabolical, infamous, and infernal 
—adjectives going for nothing in the swell and rush of 
his fierce emphasis. A terrible man to people who lived in 
another zone and spoke a soft and milky language; but a 
very Hercules and hero to those who could play with tigers 
and hunt with wolves. I see him now with his sloe- 
black eyes, fist of iron, chest that needed no smith-made 
mail, and with a gait that might have suggested the pro- 
prietorship of the entire solar system.’’ If he had the will 
of ten men, and the son had some will of his own, it may 


Ib PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


be surmised that times between them were not always as 
quiet as a summer sea. 

Happily his mother was another sort of person. The 
value of the father’s contribution to the son’s breeding 
and character does not need to be discounted unduly; but 
evidently some of his qualities required balancing if not 
counteracting. The mother was ‘‘a character of extraor- 
dinary depth and religiousness.”’ ‘“‘She was ‘so quiet,’”’ 
says the son, “‘so patient, so full of hope; seeing everything 
without looking, praying much, and teaching her son to 
pray.’ And again he says: “‘Sweet mother! A sort of 
superstitious woman withal, and not indisposed to believe 
in ghosts. She was never quite comfortable without a 
twig of rowan tree in the house and could never comforta- 
bly begin anything new on Friday. How glad, too, the 
dear soul was when she had a good ‘first foot’ on New 
Year’s morning, for that ‘foot’ mysteriously hinted at 
the character and fortune of the whole year.’”’ Some 
measure of this superstition passed to the son himself. 
Later in his life he said: “‘J like a little superstition; I have 
a good deal of it; I owe a good deal to it. I got it all from 
my mother. . . . It wasno use sending a whole acade- 
my down to talk to her; she would admit every word the 
academy said and then go to see that the rowan tree was 
still on the edge of the clock—to keep the bogies away. 
It was all right. Nor would she have a peacock feather 
in the house; all peacock feathers were with her associated 
with some kind of doom, distress, sudden death, and 
marvelous ministries not to be named. But she could 
pray; but for that superstitious side of her nature she could 
not have prayed as she did, taking a square hold of God and 
saying: ‘I will not let thee go, though the morning is light- 
ening on the hills, until thou bless me.’’”’ There was an 
uncommon affection between mother and son, which re- 


PULEPIT AND’ PASTORATE 213 


dounded greatly to the comfort and credit of both of 
them. 

There was little that was affluent in his early life except 
this mother’s love and her religion. ‘‘Perhaps, Joseph, 
you don’t mind not having any milk in your tea, for I 
have not got any,”’ she would say to him when he came in 
from one of his speaking engagements, which he undertook 
regularly when he was scarcely midway in his teens, and 
which could but have subjected him to no little weariness 
and discouragement under all the circumstances. Cheer- 
fully he would reply: ‘‘ Not a bit; what do I care for milk? 
Why, to have this tea given as you have given it, it is rich 
with the richest cream, sweet with the sweetest sugar.” 
Such encouragement he had from her without stint; but 
for the rest he had a continual struggle with adversity. 
“The full tale of what he has endured, overcome, and 
accomplished is a secret that will die with him,” said one 
who when he spoke had particular reference to this part of 
his life. His school life was irregular and otherwise not 
wholly prosperous and advantageous, though he could say 
that he had several worthy and capable teachers. But the 
time and regularity which are such necessary elements in 
an education were so seriously lacking as largely to cancel 
such opportunities as he might otherwise have had. At 
fourteen it was determined that he should follow his father’s 
trade; but the effort proved abortive, and at the end of a 
year thus passed he was at school again. Again there was 
some thought of his becoming an architect; but this plan 
also failed. There was to be a higher disposal of his life, 
a sovereign investment of his talents. 


A Stupy IN PREPARATION 


Adversity has its own advantages, and the adverse cir- 


cumstances which Joseph Parker encountered and over- 
18 | 


274 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


came in his earlier life constituted an undesigned prepara- 
tion for meeting the strenuous demands which were made 
upon him in so many ways in his later life. In spite of 
adverse circumstances, too, there had been planted in him 
the seeds of that religious devotion which deeply marked 
his later life. The Bible was the book most diligently 
read in the home, and on this he was nurtured from a child. 
On Sundays no other reading was allowed except the 
Bible, Watts’s Psalms and Hymns, and such works as 
Hervey’s ‘“‘Meditations among the Tombs.’’ Whoever 
will may deride such religious rigidity, but perhaps it is 
better after all than the funny section of the modern Sun- 
day newspaper. People who have got to go to the tombs 
may as well become somewhat accustomed beforehand to 
the somberness of the prospect. 

There is no definite crisis of conversion that can be fixed 
upon in his experience. There was a time, however, when 
as he walked on a Sunday evening with his father and 
Sunday school teacher his reaching after God came to a 
culmination, and he definitely declared his love to Christ 
and asked him to take his child heart into his own gracious 
keeping. Time does not wait on human decisions. The 
father had thought for some time that the boy’s future 
must be decided upon. When he was about sixteen years 
old the Rev. Thomas Rogers, the father of Dr. Guinness 
Rogers, came to Hexham on a visit. The revered minister 
and the deeply interested father sought jointly to find a 
solution of the problem of the boy’s career. He himself 
sat within hearing distance while they discussed his case. 
But they could make no satisfactory disposition of the 
matter. All this while the boy himself has cherished in 
his heart a secret desire that he might become a preacher. 
And so earnest and fixed is the desire that in his crude way 
he sets about preparing himself for the high vocation. 


BRULEE ET AND: PASTORATE 275 


He eagerly appropriated to his use all the books that by 
any honest means he could lay his hands on. He had a 
triangular arrangement fixed to the wall which it seemed 
almost ridiculous to call a bookcase, and yet he remembered 
it most gratefully. He had Zimmermann on “Solitude,” 
his favorite book, Borrow’s “Bible in Spain,’’ “‘and two 
or three or half a dozen more books, more to me than ever 
the British Museum Library was or is likely to be.”” At any 
rate he made more of his rude triangular bookshelf and 
its contents than many a man has made of the British 
Museum Library and its contents. The contents of libra- 
ries have to be gotten out of the libraries and into men in 
order to be effective in the Christian ministry. 

This future oratorical athlete, with commendable as- 
siduity, studied the art of speaking. He diligently prac- 
ticed elocution, and it does not seem to have turned him 
into a specimen of artificial inefficiency or in any other way 
to have hurt him. Long before he had left his teens he 
procured the speeches of Charles James Fox and recited 
them aloud going down the quiet roads of Hexham, much 
to the alarm of certain ladies frequenting the open ways 
of the adjacent fields. He studied the speeches of the 
attorneys delivered in the Irish sedition trials, then pinned 
the newspaper slips to the walls of his room and made 
vehement arguments to imaginary juries, winning no doubt 
the most of the cases. Reading aloud he also practiced, 
striving to use his voice as if to make it reach a thousand 
people. The whole of “‘ Paradise Lost”’ he subjected to this 
exercise. Large portions of the Bible he would commit to 
memory and recite them in his solitary walks as if he were 
reading them in a large public assembly. 

All these exercises were next door to public speaking 
and to preaching in the open air. ‘‘ Wanting in my soul to 
preach,” he said, “I boldly stood up and preached! I 


276 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


asked no permission; I made no bow of homage to custom 
or authority; but being moved to preach, I stood up on a 
high stone and preached Jesus and the resurrection.” 
Of a piece with this performance of his own was his later 
advice to some young men who came to see him, stating 
that they felt called to preach. He was glad to hear it, 
and recommended to them that they at once set about the 


good work. “But, Doctor, we were hoping you would 
give us advice as to studies,” they said, ‘‘and, possibly, a 
suitable college.’’ ‘‘No,” said he, ‘if you feel that you are 


called to preach, just go to that street corner where the 
men are loafing about, take a three-legged stool, stand upon 
it, and begin. You will soon discover whether you are 
called to preach. The public will give you your certificate.” 
This may seem a very summary way in which to deal with 
a call to preach. But it has virtue in it anyway. 

In his early teens he engaged actively in addressing boys’ 
meetings, and made a prominent figure in local debating 
societies. In his eighteenth year he preémpted a saw pit 
and preached his first sermon. It was on a Sunday after- 
noon in June. He had accompanied two local preachers 
from Hexham to the place, which was four miles away. 
First one of the local preachers preached, and then the 
other. Young Parker had gone to the meeting without 
any intention of preaching. But he caught fire while the 
second preacher preached. Borrowing a Bible, he kept a 
keen eye on his opportunity. As soon as the second preach- 
er sat down he mounted a crossbeam of the saw pit, and, 
uninvited and unannounced, gave the astonished people 
their third sermon. His text possessed just the sternness 
and authority which his purpose required. He announced 
it in the following terms: ‘‘It shall be more tolerable for 
Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you.” Describ- 
ing the occasion and his own precipitate action long after- 


em 


—s 
i 


~s 





PULPIT AND. PASTORATE 277 


wards, he said: ‘‘ Not one word of the sermon can I remem- 
ber. As for ideas, probably there were none to recollect. 
I do remember, however, the tone of denunciation. I 
did not spare the iniquities of the age; I loosed all the 
thunders I could command, and delivered my soul with 
audacious frankness. The sermon was necessarily extem- 
poraneous. Neither thought nor word had I prepared. 
I simply knew that the age was corrupt, and, taking the 
hundred rustics as representatives of the total iniquity, 
I hurled upon them the thunderbolts of outraged heaven. 
Some persons are kind enough to think that even now I 
am not wholly destitute of energy, but I can assure them 
that at eighteen, volcanoes, tornadoes, whirlwinds, and 
other energetics cut a very secondary figure when I was 
on the saw pit.” 

His second sermon, preached also in the open air, had a 
not less minatory text than the first: “‘If I whet my glit- 
tering sword, and mine hand take hold on. judgment; I will 
render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them 
that hate me.”’ (Deut. 32:41.) His third sermon brought 
him, as he said, his call to the ministry. He delivered it in 
the evening twilight at a wheelwright’s door. In the ab- 
sence of anyone else to do it, he had to undertake to lead 
the singing himself, and this part of the service was not a 
conspicuous success. But ‘the sermon went like an equi- 
noctial gale.’’ Afterwards the villagers crowded around 
him and implored him to come again. He went on diligent- 
ly, preaching anywhere in the open spaces round about, 
and in the neighboring villages, walking oftentimes four- 
teen miles to his appointments. He engaged in teaching 
for a time; but all the while he had his major eye on the 
ministry, and labored indefatigably to qualify himself for 
it. He studied his Greek Testament; and arose at six 
o’clock in the morning, before his school began, to read 


278 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


theology with a minister who kindly assisted him. Whether 
under the circumstances it was an extremely foolish or 
instead a very bold step for him to take, no council, ecclesi- 
astical or otherwise, has ever determined, but when he 
was not yet twenty-two years old he married. It was not 
so much a question of age as of circumstances. ‘There 
could be no question, however, of the excellence of the 
choice he made. Until her death dissolved their union 
twelve years later Ann Nesbitt was to him all that he could 
desire in a wife. 


THE ADVANCING MATURITY OF H1Is POWERS 


Maturity in a man is not a fixed estate. Maturity may 
advance. If it be too severely arrested in its progress, it 
ceases to be a real maturity and becomes degeneration. 
The character and the career of Joseph Parker constitute 
a study in the advancing maturity of his powers. He could 
not grow to his proper stature in roving about Hexham, 
valuable as the discipline of those days was to all his later 
years. He could hardly escape the consciousness of both 
an inward and an outward constraint. He could but 
heed the call, whether it came audibly and through visible 
signs or not, to embark upon wider seas. His course had 
not widened, and it had not become clear before him. 
He was now in the near neighborhood of his twenty-second 
birthday, he had the responsibility of caring for a wife, 
and he had long made up his mind that he must devote his 
life to the Christian ministry. In these circumstances he 
wrote to Dr. John Campbell, a pastor in London and an 
influential figure in religious circles there. He made a very 
frank statement about himself, told what his aspirations 
were, and asked to be advised as to his future. The result 
Was an invitation to London. He traveled thither on his 
twenty-second birthday. Dr. Campbell invited him to 





BUEE LAND PASTORATE 279 


preach in his pulpit, and became his tutor and friend, 
criticizing his sermons and guiding him in his theological 
studies. While he tarried in London, assisting Dr. Camp- 
bell and supplying the pulpit of a vacant chapel, a stage of 
his life which occupied about a year and a half, he made 
his first appearance in print. Since he became so volumi- 
nous an author it is interesting to see how he made his 
start. He had written a series of articles addressed to 
young people and sought a publisher for them. Let him 
tell the rest of the story: “I was just a raw youth. I went 
with them in my hand to Cassell’s office, but I hadn’t the 
courage to take them in myself, so I paid a boy, who was 
standing outside, twopence to take them for me. When 
I saw him coming out of the shop without them I took to 
my heels and fled, expecting that the editor and all the staff 
would be after me for my impertinence. But when John 
Cassell sent me six guineas, and I read my sketches in the 
Popular Educator, I felt that my fortune was made.”’ 
London has been kind to him, still he finds no permanent 
settlement in the work of the ministry. This he obtained, 
however, in the fact of his ordination as the minister of the 
Congregational Church at Banbury, in Oxfordshire, on 
November 8, 1853. He started on a salary of two pounds 
and ten shillings a week. This did not suffice for any ex- 
tended excursions outside the necessities of a living, not 
even in the direction of book-buying; but one day a man 
came and handed him a package and said, “‘I want you to 
take this as a present from me.’’ He found it to be a six- 
volumed commentary, and withal was very happy. He 
prospered even on a small salary, worked very hard in the 
preparation of his sermons, which at this time he wrote out 
in full, resumed his favorite exercise of preaching in the 
open air, and sought out the roughest characters of the 
town, rebuked them for their profligacy, and reasoned 


280 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


with them of righteousness, and temperance, and judgment 
to come. He remained at Banbury for four years and eight 
months, and here as elsewhere he created interesting and 
exciting incidents, if they did not naturally exist. He de- 
bated publicly with the secular opponents of Christianity, 
who at that time were very aggressive, and published the 
substance of his side of the debate in book form. He wrote 
a prize essay for which he obtained about as much as forty 
weeks of his earliest salary was worth. Here he learned the 
routine of a Congregational minister’s life and work, 
found time for study and thought, and for further self- 
equipment for the unknown tasks which lay before him. 
From Banbury he passed to the pastorate of the Caven- 
dish Street Chapel, Manchester. The pastor of this Church 
occupied a very important position, both in the city of 
Manchester and throughout the denomination. Parker’s 
position was a very trying one. He was only twenty- 
eight years old. He had not been to college. He had had 
no systematic training in theology. He had no academic 
degree whatever. And all these things counted for much 
to a man in his position. But he was made of sterling stuff, 
he had been in training, if he had not been academically 
educated, and he possessed a strength of personality which 
knew only to conquer. The almost five quiet years—as 
far as he permitted them to be quiet—spent in the country 
town of Banbury prepared him for bustling Manchester; 
and the eleven active years spent in busy Manchester pre- 
pared him for London. Dawson, in his biography, says: 
*‘Had Joseph Parker known from the first what his destiny 
was to be, and had had the mapping out of his life, he could 
hardly have wished things to be much different from what 
they were; and herein he would be the first to recognize 
the working of that Providence belief in which was the 
mainspring of his life.’’, While in Manchester he published 


Por. ft) AND (PASTORATE 281 


his first volume of sermons, and also issued ‘‘Ecce Deus,”’ 
which, at least as to its reserved intentions, was a reply to 
Seeley’s ‘‘Ecce Homo,’ which itself had just been issued. 
At the early age of thirty-two he received the honorary 
degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Chica- 
go. It was also while at Manchester that he married again 
and entered into that happy union the breaking of which 
by his beloved’s death broke his heart in his old age and 
hastened his own death. 

Thus far has run the outward, and also the inward, course 
of his life, the one intensely calling and as intensely an- 
swering to the other. He was in his singularity an amazing 
man, and his life and character present a striking study 
in contrasts. Sir William Robertson Nicoll, than whom 
_ there could not be a better judge, nor one who knew him 
more intimately in his later days, wrote of him in the 
British Weekly: “‘I have met men more clever and more 
accomplished, and even men more alert, but never a man, 
with perhaps one exception, more plainly possessed of the 
indefinable quality called genius.”” And yet there were 
sharp contrasts. He was extremely distrustful of himself, 
and would crave some visible sign or token that he was do- 
ing good; still “‘he was often taken for an enormous egoist; 
and in a sense that was true.”’ He “lived in the constant 
need of encouragement.” He would thrust forward as 
boldly as a lion in a good cause; and yet was as shy asa 
mouse. His very appearance of an aggravated egoism was 
explained by some who knew and loved him as but a mask 
of his shyness. He gave the impression of being overbear- 
ing in his boldness; and yet he was lacking in self-con- 
fidence. He might have been thought callous to criticism; 
and yet he was extremely sensitive. His sensitiveness, Dr. 
Nicoll thought, was caused by “‘the hardness of his child- 
hood and youth. He said once that his life had been a 


282 PRINCES TORT THES GHRISTi 


continual fight and a frequent pain. It was true that his 
career was hewn out by stress of will. Every sixpence he 
possessed was earned. He won and kept his own position 
against hosts of adversaries. His impulsiveness and his 
sensitiveness cost him much.” If we could only know how 
hard the battle goes with the man at our side, how much 
deeper and more constant would be the flow of our charity. 

He had little genius for friendship, and yet he was a man 
full of human and Christian devotion. When the wife and 
companion of his later life died, he felt it as the thrust of 
a sword blade through his heart. He misses her ‘‘with a 
dull agony that sometimes sinks into despair.” ‘I dwell 
in a tent of misery pitched by the river of sorrow,”’ said he. 
He, of course, was not without the consolation which every 
Christian man has, but he deeply suffered. He suffered so 
deeply that he lost the very words of prayer. At the serv- 
ice at the City Temple on Thursday two days after the 
funeral he said: ‘I asked God—though I have not prayed 
for several days—to send her to be near me this morning 
that I might get through this service without a quaver or 
a tear. That prayer has been happily realized.”’ 

His sympathies and his feelings were deep, but he gave 
them scant social expression. ‘‘Few men have cared 
less for general society. . . . When he did accept an 
invitation to a dinner party, he was always miserable be- 
fore he went, and often miserable after. He would imagine 
that he had said something or done something that should 
not have been said or done.”’ A fear of unintentional mis- 
doing seemed almost to haunt him. At the celebration in 
the City Temple of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the be- 
ginning of his ministry in London, he said: “If I have 
wronged any man, I humble myself before him. If I have 
done any man any injustice, I can say before high heaven 
I have done it unconsciously and unintentionally.” 


Bur eax N De PASTORATE 283 


A man constitutionally possessed of such contrasts of 
temperament has his stern contests with himself. It is 
self-mastery or self-defeat after a very decisive fashion. 
If he does not attain to some good degree of self-mastery, he 
is self-defeated. And if he suffers defeat within, he is de- 
feated without. Joseph Parker, then, could but have won 
a prime secret of self-mastery. He had periods of such 
serious depression that he would talk of giving up his work 
and of secreting himself in obscurity until he should be 
called away from an unprofitable life. Great and cos- 
mopolitan congregations faced him in the City Temple 
without diminution of numbers or of interest. Yet he had 
strange misgivings about it all, and a frequent fear of fail- 
ure; and often said to Dr. Nicoll that when he would go 
down to preach at the Temple he would say to himself: 
‘What if nobody is in the Temple to-day!’’ And yet 
with all this constraint to discouragement and to defeat 
he mastered himself and bent his powers daily to their 
task. He never suffered himself to be in a hurry, as surely 
his temperament would have constrained him to be, and 
kept himself in advance of his work. Nor did he ever for- 
get anything he desired to remember. A man who thus 
lays the lash to such a temperament as he had and brings 
it under control and subjects it to the higher dictates of 
his will, has shown himself to be a hero in the strife. 

The capacity for growth through the mastery of oneself 
and the control and direction of one’s powers to the desired 
end is one of the vital and final determinants of character. 
And so it was with this man. It was found that he had 
grown tremendously as time went on, and his work had 
grown with him. It was a long leap from the saw pit to the 
City Temple, from a hundred village rustics to a crowded 
and cultured and cosmopolitan city congregation. And 
he gave himself whole-heartedly to them both. This was 


284 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


the secret of his growth. He appropriated the principle of 
the Parable of the Talents that he that is faithful in that 
which is least shall be given command in that which is 
much. If he had slighted his rustics, he would never have 
been fit to face culture. And thus he grew. ‘No preacher,” 
says Dr. Nicoll again, ‘‘more visibly grew than Parker. 
To compare his early sermons with his last is a lesson 
never to be forgotten.’”’ Many men ‘are born with fine 
capacity and fine talents, but not all of them grow. 


His GREAT ACHIEVEMENT 


His great achievement was his London ministry. It 
was an achievement worthy of all the talents he possessed. 
There are two principal aspects of this achievement, the 
administrative and the homiletical. 


I. His Administrative Achievement 


1. His ministry in this aspect of it constitutes a study 
in the courage that attempts the incredible. He himself 
had a notable sermon on “The Incredible Things of Life.” 
His text was: ‘The kings of the earth and all the inhabit- 
ants of the world would not have believed that the adversa- 
ry and the enemy should have entered into the gates of 
Jerusalem.” ‘“‘He discoursed on the incredible things of 
life, on the victories gained over what seemed to be in- 
vincible, on the entrance into gates that were meant to 
resist the world. These things happened not only to the 
amazement of the people, the inhabitants of the world, 
but also to the complete confounding of the experts and the 
kings of the earth, who knew the weight and value of each 
stone in the fortress and could tell how the gates had been 
welded and locked.’”’ Such a sermon evidently contains 
autobiographic reflections. He himself had attempted 
the incredible. It was almost an incredible thing that he 





PULPIT AND PASTORATE 285 


had come to London at all. It required great courage to 
come. He was prosperously placed in Manchester. He 
had a great Church, and a great congregation, and all his 
affairs were prosperous. Things were not prosperous at 
the Poultry Chapel to which he came. It was an old and 
a distinguished Church; the renowned Thomas Goodwin, 
a noble Christian man, a rare expositor of Paul, and an 
able preacher, had been its founder. But its affairs had 
languished. It had been left in the position of a stranded 
down-town Church, and that in a rather obscure corner. 
But there were those who loved it and believed it ought to 
be saved; and they were persuaded that Joseph Parker was 
the man to do it. He did save it and brought forth out 
of the ashes of its apparent ruin the City Temple. 

2. A study in the faith that attempts the invisible. The 
text of his first sermon in his new situation was: “I will go 
before thee, and make the crooked places straight.’ There 
were crooked places, but he saw them made straight. 
There were rough places, but he saw them made smooth. 
He had ‘‘ventured to look at London itself,’’ he said, ‘‘to 
look on young men, on strangers, on poor forlorn castaways, 
that would be glad to hear a word of Divine hope.’”’ He 
thought there must be some people left in his part of the 
town on Sunday in spite of all reports to the contrary. 
Even when he had been to America and had seen New 
York, he still was of the opinion that London offered the 
finest field in the world for ministerial usefulness. 

The site chosen for the new City Temple was encom- 
passed by scenes of historic interest. Not far away was 
Smithfield, where Anne Askew’s soul had ascended to heav- 
en in a flame of fire while she had died with the golden 
word on her lips: “‘I came not hither to deny my Lord.” 
And she had had her companions in the great tribulation. 
It was not a bad place for a heroic undertaking. Deliver- 


286 PRINCES OF THE “CHRISTE 


ing the address at the laying of the memorial stone Dr. 
Parker ‘‘touched on the resolve of the Church to remain 
in the city and seek a constituency among young men, 
housekeepers, travelers, strangers, and poor people who 
could not afford to go into the suburbs; and its decision 
not to hide in a back street, but to occupy a conspicuous 
position, putting ‘our trust in the might and love of God.’”’ 
The quick success which came in increased congregations 
and in the prosperity of all his new London undertaking 
was only such as he had seen coming through the might and 
love of God. 

3. A study in intensive leadership. The leadership 
which Dr. Parker naturally assumed when he came to the 
tottering Poultry Chapel in London saved the situation 
there and enabled that enterprise to expand to the propor- 
tions realized in the new situation at the City Temple. 
Within a limited circle he had a distinct power to impress 
and to dominate. He communicated his own courage and 
faith to others. He had the power to create an atmosphere 
of confidence in the success of a great undertaking. His 
people came to regard his pastorate and the success of 
their enterprise as inseparably bound together. And the 
City Temple, built at a cost of £70,000 and constructed 
to seat more than 3,000 persons, was the fruit of their 
combined confidence and courage and determination. 
Only within this limited field, however, was he a successful 
leader. In wider spheres he was hindered from attaining 
to the position of a great leader by his impulsiveness and 
undue sensitiveness. He could take up the fight for a great 
cause, but he did not have the patience and the constancy 
of purpose required to see it through; and he could not 
easily brook a difference from those who fought with him. 
Nevertheless he was a time or two the president of his own 





mE ULPIT AND: PASTORATE 287 


_ Congregational Union, and he was once elected to the 
presidency of the National Free Church Council. 


IIT. His Homuiletic Achievement 


1. In its larger aspects his ministry was a devotion to 
the Word of God, a championship of evangelical Chris- 
tianity. His preaching had its roots deeply set in the Bible. 
Says Dr. Nicoll: ‘‘He read much in the Bible, and texts 
started out of its pages. When he found a text, he brooded 
over it in his solitary walks, in his study, and in his garden 
till he reached the heart of it. Once that was discovered, 
illustrations crowded upon him, and his work was prac- 
tically done. There lie before me as I write many of his 
sermon notes used in the pulpit. They are written in pen- 
cil, and each text is followed by about a dozen lines. This 
was quite enough for him. His preaching was never at 
any time a burden to him, but always a joy. He was very 
rarely in need of a text; 1n fact, he had almost always a few 
texts in hand.”’ A preacher who lives in his Bible and whose 
Bible lives in him cannot be lacking in texts. Almost the 
whole of “‘The People’s Bible,” published afterwards in 
twenty-five volumes, was spoken first from his pulpit. 
He began the colossal undertaking with the following state- 
ment: ‘‘ This is a very important occasion to me; it may be 
an occasion of some importance to you and to many others 
in the providence of God in years to come. I am just about 
to open the Bible and to ask you to fix your eyes year by 
year, God willing, upon the miracle of books. This is the 
determination to which I have been led, and I trust divinely 
and humbly, just to begin at the very beginning of the 
book and, so far as life and energy hold out, to set down 
in order what thoughts may be given to me about the reve- 
lation asa whole. Some parts of the day I shall preach here 
and there in the Book, but generally I trust one part of the 


288 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN | 


day to keep on the steady line of comment and exposition. 
It will take years to do this.” How many years he did not | 
know, but at the end of seven the task was complete. 
From 1884 to 1891 the Sunday morning, the Sunday even- — 
ing, and the Thursday morning sermons went into ‘The — 
People’s Bible.’”’ There were twenty-nine consecutive — 
sermons on the book of Numbers, and every one of them ~ 
is said to have been listened to by a large congregation. 

The principle of substitution as forming a part of the © 
essence of the gospel he firmly believed. ‘“‘Is there not a : 
sense,” says he in a sermon on Paul’s Letter to Philemon, — 
“never to be explained, because never to be comprehended, ( 
in which Christ is making up to justice, and truth, and — 
honor, and divinity, all that we have done that has been ~ 
wrong, untrue, impure, false, mischievous? Jesus Christ — 
stood in the sinner’s stead.. Jesus Christ received the blow — 
which would have destroyed the world. Argue about it © 
as you please, refine and contend with much skill of lan- © 
guage and persistence of tenacity, but you come around 
again to some principle of substitution in connection with 
the work of Christ. ‘He was wounded for our transgres- 
sions; he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement 
of our peace was upon him. He was delivered for our of- 
fenses.. He was the Lamb of God that took away the sins 
of the world. Granted that there may be many little 
refinements upon these words, and many different ways of — 
explaining them, yet, under all the explanation, you must > 
get at some principle of substitution—Christ standing in 
man’s stead—or, where you explain one difficulty you in- 
vite a thousand.’”’ And then he imagines Onesimus going 
back without the letter: ‘Think of Onesimus without the | 
letter. He is going back to Philemon, and has no letter! 
He is puzzling his brain as he goes along to know how to 
begin when he sees Philemon—what to say—how to make 








PULPIT AND PASTORATE 289 


a beginning, to put the case into anything like shape; and 
he does not know. He says: ‘I think I shall run away again. 
I really can’t tell how to put this case. What can I say 
but that I am ashamed of myself, and that I am sorry for 
myself, and that I beg his pardon?’ He’ll say: ‘Yes, you 
beg my pardon now! When you find you can’t do better 
elsewhere, you come back here, do you, with your fine 
apologies and long explanations, and your hypocritical 
tears and canting sobs! That’s the way you do, is it?’ 
He says: ‘I think I shan’t go! I can’t go!’ That is Onesi- 
mus without the letter. But Onesimus with the letter! 
He says: ‘This is the letter; I shall say nothing to him; I 
shall just put this into his hand; he’ll know Paul’s writing; 
he’ll wonder how I ever got hold of this letter, and he’ll 
read the letter before he says anything to me.’ He says: 
‘O, I mustn’t lose the ietter; I mustn’t lose the letter! 
This letter is my life; it is pleading forme. . . . The 
letter saves him. Think of a sinner without Christ! How 
he is reasoning; how he is beating his brains; how he is 
goading his mind to suggest plans, and shapes, and argu- 
ments, and defenses! And it all comes to nothing. Then 
think of the sinner with Christ! He says: ‘O, it is this 
Cross that I am going with; I shall hide myself behind the 
Cross! I shall not open my lips at all until I have been 
found behind the Cross; and then, when I do open them, 
I shall only say: ‘“‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’’’ No 
man ever went to God in that way that was not instantly 
called in and set down to the hospitality of infinite love. 
‘There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one 
sinner that repenteth.’”’ 

2. He possessed qualities of utterance which gave him 
a wide and commanding power of appeal. 

(1) The quality of directness or straightforwardness of 
utterance he possessed in a peculiar degree. There was no 

19 


290 PRINCES OF THE GHRISTIAM 


vacuity, no ambiguity in his speech. Strikingly rhetorical 
as he was, he suffered no redundance of rhetoric to obscure 
his meaning. Of all magniloquent phrases and phraseology 
he had a very poor opinion. ‘Particularly,’ he says, 
especially to preachers, “‘strike out such words as ‘me- 
thinks I see,’ ‘cherubim and seraphim,’ ‘the glinting 
stars,’ ‘the stellar heavens,’ ‘the circumambient air,’ ‘the 
rustling wings,’ ‘the pearly gates,’ ‘the glistening dew,’ 
‘the meandering rills,’ and ‘the crystal battlements of 
heaven.’ I know how pretty they look to the young eye, 
and how sweetly they sound in the young ear; but let them 
go without a sigh.”’ Pulpit eloquence he considered to be 
conversational at its base. At any rate it must be sane. 
‘“The eloquence,’ he says, ‘‘which meanders with the rills, 
floats with butterflies, languishes in pale moonlight, plashes 
in crested foam on the golden sands, bathes itself in crim- 
son sunshine, and generally makes a fool of itself, has van- 
ished into the nothingness out of which it came.” Again, 
pursuing the same subject, he said: “If anyone would 
excel in useful public speaking, he must, first, have some- 
thing to say; second, say it audibly and tersely; third, 
say it as if he meant it; and, fourth, not care one button 
for pedants, critics, and purists.’”’ In all this, of course, 
he is but giving counsel in conformity to the aims and 
standards of his own style. He did not himself ‘meander 
with the rills,’’ nor too much aspire to ‘the pearly gates.” 
Moreover, this quality of directness in speech was sharp- 
ened by wit. Speaking before the British Wesleyan Con- 
ference in 1899, he said that when the previous speaker, 
Dr. McEwan, had spoken of himself as ‘‘a humble Presby- 
terian,’’ he had said to himself: ‘‘I will turn aside and see 
this great sight, what it may mean.” “At this,” said the 
Methodist Recorder, ‘‘the Conference was simply con- 
vulsed.”” That such a man should possess a wide power 





3) 
: 
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Pu bie AN DPASTORATE 291 


of appeal is only the answer to a natural expectation. 
An evangelist who labored at a place called the Heath 
brought one of the brickmakers of which his population 
was in part composed to London on a holiday and carried 
him up to hear Dr. Parker preach. When the service was 
over the evangelist said: ‘‘Well, Sam, what do you think 
of Dr. Parker?’”’ ‘‘I tell ’e what it is, sir,’’ was the reply; 
‘that’s just the sort of preaching as we wants up at the 
Heath?” ‘Is it, Sam?” said his friend, not knowing 
what else to say. ‘Yes, sir,’’ was the answer, ‘“‘what we 
want there is a man as has got summat to say, and as 
knows how to say it.” 

(2) He possessed a highly cultivated power of extem- . 
poraneous utterance. His self-imposed and self-directed 
drills in elocution in his roving days when he uncertainly 
aspired to better things enabled him bravely to bear the 
brunt of the better days when they did come. For they 
were not merely lessons in elocution, but finished exercises 
in extemporaneous speech. The language of his sermons 
was forged in the pulpit. His utterance came at length to 
be wholly extemporaneous. His work was finished in the 
act of utterance. Verbatim transcripts of the reporter’s 
notes on his sermons for ‘‘The People’s Bible’? were sent 
direct to the printer. He could not be prévailed upon to 
read the proof of one of his sermons. He seemed to have 
an aversion to going over again in the printed form any 
considerable part of his own sermons. This created in 
him, whether consciously to himself or not, a striving for 
a finished and final form of extemporaneous speech. He 
preached to his reporter, and this kindled his imagination 
to the measure and to the inaudible response of the in- 
visible audiences stretching into the far distance, and it 
touched with flame his utterance. 

He was hampered by a manuscript and crippled by too 


292 PRINCES OF THE] CHRIS Tia 


much preparation. The farther he got away from a manu- 
script the better he preached. ‘On the rare occasions 
when he wrote and read a sermon,’ says Dr. Nicoll, ‘‘he 
was much less effective, and as a rule his appearances on 
great occasions were much below his average. Of this he 
was very well aware. The only time I ever knew him de- 
cidedly fail was his speech at the Union of the Churches 
in Scotland. He failed simply because he had prepared 
too much. For months the speech ran in his mind until at 
last he lost confidence in himself.’’ Verbal repetition was 
so difficult to him as to be practically impossible; and so 
he was shut up on every hand to the cultivation of the con- 
genial art of extemporaneous speech. The power, fresh- 
ness, and attraction which he held to the end were largely 
attributable to this fact. 

3. ‘‘Dr. Joseph Parker, most brilliant of rhetoricians,”’ 
is the characterization of Dr. Brastow, made in ‘‘The 
Modern Pulpit.’”’ He possessed a brilliance of rhetorical 
expression and delineation which added a touch of wonder 
to his speech. ‘“‘By one touch of the magic wand of your 
kindness,’’ said he in response to the presentation of a gift 
from friends on the occasion of the celebration of his silver 
wedding, ‘‘that which was silver has been turned into gold.” 
And so he himself turned the silver of speech into gold. 
His fertility of rhetorical resource gave an element of the 
unexpected and of surprise to his speech. ‘‘His fertility 
of mind was amazing,’”’ Dr. Garvie has said in ‘‘The Chris- 
tian Preacher,’ and certainly it was not the least of all in 
this respect that it was amazing. Let him but be taken 
in a moment of tender appeal and this quality of his preach- 
ing will appear. In a sermon on a ‘‘ Word to the Weary”’ 
he thus concludes: “‘ Did we but know the name of our pain 
we should call it Sin. What do we need, then, but Christ 
the Son of God, the Heart of God, the Love of God? He 





PULPIT AND PASTORATE 293 


will in very deed give us rest. He will not add to the great 
weight which bears down our poor strength. He will give 
us grace, and in his power all our faintness shall be thought 
of no more. Some of us know how dark it is when the full 
shadow of our sin falls upon our life, and how all the help 
of earth and time and man does but mock the pain it can- 
not reach. . . . Christ is calling for thee: I heard his 
sweet voice lift itself up in the wild wind and ask whither 
thou hadst fled, that he might save thee from death and 
bring thee home. . . . Let him but see thee sad for 
sin, full of grief because of the wrong thou hast done, and 
he will raise thee out of the deep pit and set thy feet upon 
the rock.” 

4. He paid the price of an undivided devotion to his 
task of preaching. First and last he had much directly to 
do with the training of preachers, and he held here, as in 
the ordering of his own course, that the first duty of preach- 
ers is to preach. The sphere of his pastoral labors he did 
not anywise depreciate or neglect; but he knew how to 
put the emphasis on preaching. He attended to the main 
things of his ministry, and did not suffer his time and energy 
to be too much diverted to minor interests. A man of his 
gifts has a strong temptation to this and has to set himself 
resolutely against it. ‘“‘He was too deeply pledged to 
preaching to win any real triumph in other fields. That 
is the word—he was pledged to preaching. Those five words 
uncover the secret of his supremacy as a preacher. Writ- 
ing at this time and distance from the man and the scene 
of his labors one who never saw nor heard him must turn 
time and time again to Sir William Robertson Nicoll, who 
knew him so well and was so capable a judge in such mat- 
ters. ‘‘It was as a preacher,” says he, ‘‘that he made his 
great mark and exerted his mighty influence. For multi- 
tudes there was no preacher like him. He showed power 


294 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


from the first, but he took bad models, and his taste was 
imperfect. It is wonderful to trace his progress, to see how 
he toiled and how he ascended. To other preachers he 
owed almost nothing. The one preacher whose influence 
is traceable in his later work is Newman, and Newman 
was almost the only sermon writer whom he read for many 
years. I make no attempt to analyze his preaching or 
to discover the secret of his power. It is a spiritual wonder. 
About it there was the touch of miracle. Apparently free 
from rule, it was unconsciously obedient to the great princi- 
ples of art. As you listened you saw deeper meanings. 
The horizon lifted, widened, broadened; the preacher had 
thrust his hand among your heartstrings. You heard the 
cry of life, and the Christ preached as the answer to that 
cry. The preacher had every gift. He was mystical, 
‘ poetical, ironical, consoling, rebuking by turns. Some- 
times 
‘“*As from an infinitely distant land, 


Come airs and floating echoes that convey 
A melancholy into all our day.’ 


The next moment you could not help smiling at some 
keen witticism. Then he was ironical, and you' remem- 
bered Heine, and saw that he knew how much irony is 
mingled by God in the order of his creation. Then tears 
sprang to your eyes as he pictured the failure of success, 
and told of the long, triumphant struggle and the victory 
turned into mourning by the death of the only child. 
But what description can render, or what analysis explain, 
the visible inspiration, the touch of fire from heaven?” 
When he had gone in and out of his pulpit for fifty years he 
said: “‘God has enabled me to see that there is nothing 
under heaven like preaching the gospel.’’ Dr. Monro 
Gibson said that the greatest, best, and most inspiring 
thing in that whole fifty years of ministry was that at the 





5 LE Sa (LE OLED META IO 








PULPIT AND PASTORATE 295 


end he was not only not tired of his task, but more in love 
with it than ever. He believed in the permanence of the 
institution of preaching and made his own great contribu- 
tion toward the proof of his position. 

5. The Thursday service, which he began immediately 
on his arrival in London and continued without abate- 
ment of either interest or success down to the end of his 
days, constitutes a distinct chapter in the history of the 
pulpit. “‘London is a hard city to conquer.’”’ But he had 
thought that he might conquer it and command a hearing 
for the gospel even on Thursday morning. This had been 
a reason he had for leaving Manchester. He had thought 
that he might do thisin London. And here he did command 
a cosmopolitan audience, mainly masculine, Thursday 
after Thursday, for more than thirty years, with.unflagging 
interest and without diminution of attendance while the 
tides of the great city rolled past. The service extended 
its renown to the ends of the English-speaking world and 
augmented its attendance from every clime. And the 
breadth of its intellectual and human appeal was not less 
than its geographical. Running down the list of signatures 
in the City Temple pulpit Bible, the most of whom at- 
tended on Thursday mornings, the following names appear: 
Frances E. Willard, Robert Moffatt, W. E. Gladstone, 
C. H. Spurgeon, Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Mount-Temple, 
Lord Mayor Fowler, Henry Ward Beecher, James Chal- 
mers of New Guinea, Lady Henry Somerset, Rev. W. C. 
Willoughby of Bechuanaland, with the strange names of 
African chiefs accompanying him, Herbert H. Asquith, 
Mr. Hall Caine, Hugh Price Hughes, Dr. Alfred Momerie, 
and W. H. Milburn, the blind chaplain of the United 
States Senate. 

Testimonies to the public value and personal benefit 
of these services came to Dr. Parker from a wide variety 


296 PRINCES OF THE PULPIT 


of sources—from Dean Vaughan, from Father Stanton, 
from an unnamed London vicar, voicing a deep personal 
benefit, from a zealous group of Salvationists, from a man 
traveling in the Desert of Sahara, who had “gained palm 
trees, a deep-blue sky, a balmy air,’”’ but had lost his Thurs- 
day morning service in the City Temple and wished that 
he had wings that he might transport himself thither for 
the service of the particular morning on which he was 
writing. The deeper significance of these services lies in 
the fact that they were purely religious. Preparation was 
made for them precisely as for the services on Sunday, 
and there was never injected into them anything of the 
sensational or of the mere passing day. Dr. Parker him- 
self observed that ‘‘he had never preached upon collisions, 
earthquakes, great railway accidents, or even general elec- 
tions.’”’ In this he gave a heroic exhibition of his confidence 
in the pure and simple gospel to exercise its sway over the 
minds, the hearts, and the consciences of men. To these 
services in particular the preachers gathered. Here he 
exercised his gifts as preéminently a preacher to preachers, 
as pastor pastorum. 

Dr. Parker remained at his best until he was seventy- 
one, and then began to fail. He had possessed a magnifi- 
cent constitution and had wisely conserved his strength. 
An eminent specialist whom he had consulted in a time 
of great strain had carefully examined him and had then 
told him what Sir Andrew Clark said to Gladstone—“‘ that 
he did not know at what chink of his frame death could 
enter in.’”’ But the end is inevitable, and Dr. Parker died 
on November 28, 1902, when he had gone just a little past 
midway his seventy-second and seventy-third birthdays. 





XII 


ALEXANDER McLAREN 
(1826-1910) 
A PREACHING EPOCH 


THE English pulpit of the latter half of the nineteenth 
century burst into unusual ability. This space in its 
history may well be denominated a preaching epoch. 
Within the time there appeared within the narrow circuit 
of the British Isles, indeed, within the narrower circuit of 
England alone, though two of the preachers—Robertson 
and McLaren—were of Scotch descent, not less than six 
pulpits which had a lasting fame conferred upon them by 
the distinguished ability of their incumbents. In every 
case the fame of the pulpit in the main was built by the 
ability of the man who at the particular time occupied it. 
Three of these in a peculiar way linked their names perma- 
nently with their pulpits—Parker of the City Temple, 
Spurgeon of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, and McLaren 
of Manchester. No less distinguished was the connection 
of Robertson with the Brighton pulpit, of Dr. R. W. Dale 
with the Carr’s Lane Congregational pulpit of Birming- 
ham, and of Canon H. P. Liddon with the pulpit of St. 
Paul’s Cathedral, London. It is said that Bishop Blom- 
field once remarked to Bishop Wilberforce as they were pass- 
ing St. Paul’s: “I wonder what that great building has ever 
done for the cause of Christ.”’ Liddon came and lifted the 
reproach and afterwards none could ever charge the build- 
_ ing with any such default toward its intention. 

All this is not to say that there were not other preachers 
of distinction who were produced in the same epoch; but 

(297) 


298 PRINGES OP KHE CHRIS TRAN 


it is to say that these men were connected in a peculiar 
way with particular pulpits, and that it was the man who 
made the pulpit and not the pulpit that made the man. 


AN ANTECHAMBER TO THE CHURCH 


Alexander McLaren was brought up in a home which was 
an antechamber to the Church. In truth, that home was 
in its own way a Church. It was the Church of God in the 
house of David McLaren. ‘This father had himself been 
intended for the pulpit of the Church of Scotland, for he 
was the eldest son of the house, and hence the subject of 
the accustomed desire of many devout Scottish homes that 
the eldest son should enter the ministry. But while in 
Glasgow College (afterwards the university) he was brought 
into the grip of a deeper evangelical religion and abandoned 
all thought of becoming a parish minister. Circumstances 
led him to examine the subject of baptism, and he became 
a Baptist. Perhaps out of all this there wrought upon the 
mind of Alexander McLaren some silent accumulation of 
desire toward the ministry. At any rate, when the time 
came he entered upon the great undertaking from which 
so many noble souls have shrunk and on the threshold 
of which they have faltered, without hesitation or mis- 
giving, as if there were a natural progress, though not with- 
out God’s grace, to be sure, but rather by it, from the home 
to the Church. It was as though the path he walked led 
directly from the altar of the home to the altar of the 
Church. There was no breaking away from the one in 
order to pass to the other, but the door of the one opened 
into the other. There was nothing in the Church to dis- 
turb the foundations which had been laid in the home. 
This easy and unreluctant entrance into the ministry will 
seem the more surprising when the aloofness of his disposi- 


) 
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meLPIT AND PASTORATE 299 


tion and his natural shrinking from contact with men is 
considered. 

David McLaren was a business man who was also a 
preacher. ‘‘He had many business anxieties, but his chil- 
dren remember to have heard him say,”’ writes Alexander 
McLaren, ‘‘that when he began preparations for the Sab- 
bath on the Saturday afternoon, all his troubles passed 
from his mind and left him undisturbed till Monday 
morning, when the fight was renewed.” ‘“‘The writer was 
too young,’ he continues, “‘to form a judgment of his 
father’s sermons, but not too young to receive an impres- 
sion which has powerfully influenced him in his own work, 
and abides with him still.” 

Alexander McLaren, the youngest of a family of six 
children, was born in Glasgow on February 11, 1826. 
From his earliest reflective years, and even before, he was 
sensitively impressible by objects and events in both the 
natural and the artificial world and lived at the cost which 
this sensitiveness entails. His sensitiveness made him 
shy and cut him off from any very close intimacy with his 
fellows, even though it was those who might have proved 
most congenial to him; and this was a trait which was 
fixed upon him for life. He was brought up after the 
fashion of the most rigid Puritan ritual, if the Puritans 
will pardon one for saying they had a ritual; but neither 
at the time he was subjected to it nor afterwards did he 
experience any feeling of revolt from its strictness. On 
the contrary, he counted its discipline as having been highly 
salutary and treasured its influence upon him with grati- 
tude. He was taken regularly to two services on Sunday 
long before he was old enough to listen attentively to the 
sermon, but had no remembrance of wishing the service 


to be over. The Bible lesson at home in the evening left 


300 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


him no recollection of dreary Sundays, the fame for which 
some have tried to fix upon the Scotland of the time. 

He attended the Glasgow High School, and his promi- 
nence at the prize giving on his finishing there was long 
remembered. He was seated far back in one of the city 
churches where the prizes were awarded. When his name 
was called the first time the delay in the proceedings caused 
by the time required for him to reach the front led the mas- 
ter of the school to remark to the Lord Provost who pre- 
sided over the exercises: “‘This young gentleman has to 
appear before us so often that he had better be accom- 
modated with a seat nearer the table.’’ His prize winning 
was a proof that already he had shown himself a thorough 
learner. It was only the removal of the family to London 
that prevented his completing his course at the University 
of Glasgow upon which he had entered before he was fifteen 
years old. 

His early religious quickening he owed to the Rev. 
David Russell, a Congregational minister of Glasgow, 
whose Bible class he attended during an absence of his 
father in Australia for four years on business, while the 
family perforce was left at home. According to his own 
account it was a sermon by Dr. Lindsay Alexander which 
first led him to think seriously of his actual religious condi- 
tion. At the same time Doddridge’s ‘‘Rise and Progress 
of Religion in the Soul”’ fell into his hands. He took this 
to be just what he wanted until he came to a place where he 
began to reflect that if he rejected this another offer of mercy 
also his condemnation would be all the greater, and he laid the 
book down. Thoughts about God’s election of those who 
should be saved gave him trouble. If this were true, noth- 
ing he could do could affect the result. Still he somehow 
could not feel that he was absolved of responsibility in the 
matter. The crisis finally came when he attended revival 


| 
) 
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PULPIT AND PASTORATE 301 
meetings conducted by Mr. Russell. “‘The sermon went 
-on,” he said in a written statement made afterwards to 
Mr. Russell himself and at his request, “‘and when you 
quoted the passage in John as to making ‘God a liar’ all 
my sin rushed upon me as | had never seen it before. I 
sat trembling. Then when you said that before we rose off 
our seats we might be saved for time and eternity, I felt 
hope beginning to rise in my mind. . . . My sins 
appeared in all their enormity, and I found peace and 
pardon in believing that Christ is the Saviour.”’ That this 
experience was a requisite after his careful upbringing will 
not escape the attention of any serious reader. 

The removal of the family to London had brought 
Stepney Baptist College (now Regent’s Park) within an 
accessible distance, and young McLaren entered this in- 
stitution at the fall term of 1842. He owed much to the 
principal of the time, Dr. Benjamin Davies, especially 
with respect to his acquisition of his “‘lifelong habit of 
patient, minute study of the original, not only in the prepa- 
ration of each sermon, but in his daily reading of the Scrip- 
tures as he sought for the strengthening of his own spirit- 
ual life.”’ 

Before finishing at the college he was invited to accept 
a three months’ engagement with the Portland Chapel, 
Southampton. The situation was not a promising one. 
‘“‘If the worst comes to the worst,’’ he said concerning it, 
‘“‘T shall at all events not have to reflect that I have killed 
a flourishing plant, but only assisted at the funeral of a 
withered one.” 


THE ART OF CULTIVATING A CORNER 


The trial of his powers at Southampton led to his settle- 
ment there as regular pastor. He remained for twelve years 
and diligently cultivated the corner into which he had been 


302 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


thrust. Warning young preachers afterwards against an 
unseasoned progress in the ministry, he said of these South- 
ampton days: “I thank God that I was stuck down in a 


quiet, little obscure place to begin my ministry; for that © 


is what spoils half of you young fellows. You get pitch- 
forked into prominent positions at once and then fritter 
yourselves away in all manner of little engagements that 
you call duties, going to this tea meeting, and that anni- 
versary, and the other breakfast celebration, instead of 
stopping at home and reading your Bibles and getting 
near to God. I thank God for the early days of struggle 
and obscurity.’’ What a pity it is that young preachers 
are not more generally wise enough and also willing to lay 
this counsel to heart. A poplar outgrows a hickory, but 
has not the same seasoning. A poplar is very good for a 
quick blaze, but a hickory will burn all day. It is said that 
a bishop wisely saved Bossuet from premature popularity. 
Prematurity of popularity will generally mean immaturity 
of gifts and a superficial development. Besides, an untime- 
ly taste of popularity may indispose the palate toward that 
sterner diet on which alone a great preacher can grow. 
There has been a certain tang of adversity about the men 
who in the long run have been most appreciated. 

At Southampton McLaren was faithful in that which 
was least. In this sense there was to him no least in the 
kingdom of God. He worked steadily, and he worked hard. 
He so applied himself as to increase his capacity for work. 


He so systematized his labors as to increase his facility in | 


work. Here in the beginning of his ministry he buckled 
on that armor of painstaking preparation which he never 
suffered to sit loose upon him as long as he lived. He had 
the wisdom to keep to his own corner and intensively to 
cultivate that. There might be wider and more inviting 
fields in England, but this corner had, in the providence of 


rf 


PULPIT AND- PASTORATE 303 


God, been allotted to him. He put in the seed and there 
was a harvest. He sowed the seed of a resolute purpose 
and it grew secretly in himself. Larger spheres of useful- 
ness, including London, thrust out the power of their at- 
traction toward him, but he kept steadily to his orbit. He 
‘‘had continually to decline urgent requests to preach all 
up and down Hampshire on Sundays, and deliver lectures 
on weekdays, ‘here, there, and everywhere.’ But decline 
them he did.’’ He thrust his roots downward and cast 
them out toward the seas and came in due time to a fruit- 
ful fullness of his powers. It was pertinently remarked 
concerning the course he pursued that ‘‘there is no better 
way of turning a small place into a large one than that of 
making the most of it and doing your best to it while you 
are in it.” 

Dr. Binney came down to see him, preached for him 
while there, and gave him wise advice about preaching. 
He was afterwards constrained to say: “It was Binney 
taught me to preach.’”’ One man cannot teach another to 
preach. One man can teach another to preach. And there 
you are. If a man has a good seed about preaching and 
a good soil to plant it in, it will bear fruit, sometimes, as in 
this case, a hundredfold. 

The most radiant event of his personal life, as he him- 
self would have counted it, occurred at Southampton 
when Marion McLaren, his brilliant and beautiful cousin, 
became his wife. This event was celebrated on March 
27, 1856. Fifty years afterwards, lacking but a little 
while, when the subject of these tender memories had 
been nearly twenty-one years dead, he wrote to a confi- 
dential friend: “In 1856 Marion McLaren became my 
wife. God allowed us to be together till the dark Decem- 
' ber of 1884. Others could speak of her charm, her beauty, 
her gifts and goodness. Most of what she was to me is 


304 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


forever locked in my heart. But I would fain that, in any 
notices of what I am, or have been able to do, it should 
be told that the best part of it all came and comes from her. 
We read and thought together, and her clear, bright 
intellect illumined obscurities and ‘rejoiced in the truth.’ 
We worked and bore together, and her courage and deft- 
ness made toil easy and charmed away difficulties. 
Of all human formative influences on my character and 
life hers is the strongest and best.” 


McLAREN OF MANCHESTER 


In 1858 McLaren came to Manchester and began to 
forge the links of steel which bound indissolubly the name 
of the great preacher and the great city together. He had 
the inestimable advantage of coming under the clear con- 
viction that he was acting according to the will of God. 
Notwithstanding this conviction the transition was not 
easy. Writing to a friend at the time he said: “So I have 
been shifted like the fish in the Hindoo version of the deluge 
into a bigger tank, I dare say big enough for the growth 
of a great many years yet. It came to be a dreadful wrench 
at last. The cruel tenderness of the last week was agony 
and would have been intolerable if I had not felt that the 
change was not of my seeking and was ventured upon with 
the clearest conviction that it was God’s will.”’ 

Most of the notes of his prophet-toned ministry he had 
already struck at Southampton. He came to Manchester 
bound to the people who had been grounded in the essen- 
tials of the Christian experience and caring for naught else 
than to build all Christian character upon this principle. 
In point of fact he knew no other way to build. He was not 
a man to act without having thought the principles of his 
action through. And so he says: “‘I have learned, I shall 
never unlearn, lessons that, after all, our sole power lies 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 305 


in the true, simple, sincere setting forth the living Christ, 
and I have abjured forever all the rubbish of ‘intellectual 
preaching.’ I would rather serve out slops for people to 
live upon than lumps of stone cut into the form of loaves. 
It is my ambition gradually to lead my hearers to some 
broader and more masculine type of Christian life and 
thought than they have had. I feel that the narrowest 
and least cultivated of them is nearer to me than the best 
man that ever stepped who has not ‘the root of the matter’ 
in him: and I should feel that I had done a great work in 
my small way, if I could bring these two classes of old- 
fashioned Christians and new-fashioned ones face to face 
in some instances and teach them to honor one another 
and love one another.’ The great desideratum was that | 
both classes should be Christians. And that he might make 
men Christians he would adjure “‘the rubbish of intellectual 
preaching.’’ The phrase may perchance point to some ill- 
considered effort of his own. Or it may be that Carlyle, 
by whom he was largely influenced at this time, had un- 
wittingly admonished him against too great intimacy with 
the undisciplined ‘‘immensities,” ‘‘eternities,’’ ‘‘humani- 
ties,’ and so forth, of which Carlyle himself was so fond. 

Southampton had not made McLaren widely known, 
partly owing to his dislike of superficial popularity. But 
Manchester was to give him a world fame. The Church 
to which he came, Union Chapel, was in reality a union 
Church in its constitution, but it was predominantly Bap- 
tist. And McLaren himself was so strictly a Baptist as 
almost to be so in a sectarian sense; though in truth this 
disposition was not in him. It was simply his nature to 
be intensely what he was. 

He began his ministry in Manchester on the first Sunday 
in July, preaching at both the morning and the evening 


services on great central themes of the Scriptures. He was 
20 | 


306 PRINCES OF (THE CHORis tigi 


accustomed to enter his pulpit without flourish or parade 
or any precursors of his approach. He felt all his life long 
the ‘‘awfully conspicuous position of a pulpit,’’ and it be- 
came him to enter it with dignity, and yet with a chastened 
and severely humbled spirit. The strain of a service 
wrought upon him fearfully. He was impatient of elaborate 
musical preludes and interludes, and his organist knew 
that after he appeared in his pulpit serious work must soon 
begin. Every part of the service must be bent toward the 
proper ends of worship. The whole of the service he pre- 
ferred to take himself, believing that this assisted his 
preaching. Preparing beforehand for the prayer he said 
he could not understand. Though it is evident that he 
meant what seemed to him mechanical preparation. 
Preparation of the spirit for prayer he was profoundly 
constrained to make. ‘“‘The hymn and the chapter read 
help me much, and then I try to remember nothing but 
that I am speaking to God for others and for myself and 
that he ts listening’—that was his preparation. The 
Scriptures he read most impressively and many were glad 
to come just to hear this part of the service. 

His biographer, Miss E. T. McLaren, a sister to his 
wife and a cousin of his own, justly says, as many others 
have also said, that it is as a preacher that he will be re- 
membered. He felt that he was not fit to be a pastor. 
It would no doubt have been difficult for him to be a pastor. 
But to say that he could not is granting too much to his 
reluctance. He simply shrank too much from contact 
with his fellows and allowed himself to do it even here. 
A member of his Church in Manchester, an ungifted and 
uneducated man, as affairs of the world go, came to him 
and asked him: ‘Are you aware that your housemaid is 
under serious conviction regarding the state of her soul?”’ 
‘“No,”’ he answered, ‘‘I did not know; but I commend her 


BULPIT AND: PASTORATE 307 


to your care. I am able, with God’s help, to teach his truth 
to hundreds; you can bring it home better to one or two.”’ 
This may have been very good for the maid, but it was not 
good for McLaren. Still there is no denying the peculiari- 
ties of his temperament; though these might very well to 
some extent at least have been overcome. Still less may 
it be forgotten that he had his own clear conviction of what 
was God’s will for him; and this was that he was, first of 
all, to be a preacher. 

Very soon the new voice speaking in Union Chapel pul- 
pit began to be heard throughout the city. His situation 
was a rather inconvenient suburban one. But this dis- 
advantage ceased to count, and the people made a beaten 
path to his door. A great preacher is really a very difficult 
person to conceal. Attendants upon his services began to 
appear from all parts of the city and from beyond its 
limits. Many a young clerk or student who had endured 
a toilsome week trudged his way on foot across the city 
and back for the uplift and encouragement he got from 
this pulpit on Sunday. Eventually he had a very wide 
variety of hearers—‘‘men of all classes and creeds, rich 
and prosperous merchants, men distinguished in profes- 
sional life, and others working their way toward success. 
Young men from the offices and warehouses in the city 
sat side by side with artisans. Strangers were attracted 
in large numbers, among them clergymen and dignitaries 
of the Established Church, Nonconformist ministers, 
literary men, artists, and students from the theological 
colleges.” 

Naturally household arrangements centered around the 
man and the ministry upon which he was so intent. Break- 
_ fast was early, and while it progressed there was a glance 
at letters, and at the Manchester Guardian, which, though 


308 PRINCES OF (THE GHRISTEAN 


it was one of the great newspapers of the world, was never 
permitted to be seen in the study until the afternoon. 

He resembled John Wesley in being able to command 
sleep practically at will and was enabled thereby to con- 
serve his none too abundant supply of energy. ‘‘He could 
say that, notwithstanding lifelong perturbation before each 
sermon and public engagement of any kind, he had never 
lost a night’s sleep either before or after even those he 
dreaded most.”’ Very early in his ministry he had resolved 
to establish himself'in this habit. 

A practice in which he delighted of reading aloud in the 
home not only ministered to the pleasure and edification of 
all the family, but doubtless also made its contribution to 
the fine and serviceable qualities of his voice. Ruskin, 
Browning, Shakespeare, Dickens, and others occupied 
these hours. , 

In the course of events a new and larger church was re- 
quired for his congregation. But he rather regretfully 
saw the enterprise taken in hand, for he had a dread all 
the while it was in building lest it should be half empty 
when done. 

Notwithstanding the difficulty in securing his services 
for outside engagements, he was drawn first and last into a 
good deal of this form of work. One of his notable outside 
appearances was on the occasion of a sermon delivered for 
the London Missionary Society at one of its important 
anniversaries. His.great friend and preaching mentor, 
Dr. Binney, met him in the vestry at the close of the serv- 
ice, but at first could not speak and later went home to 
weep. The sermon, the title of which was ‘The Secret of 
Power,’ was a great intellectual and spiritual triumph, 
and Binney had his own share in it. 

In 1877, when he was full fifty-one years old, he received 
the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from Edinburgh, 





PULPIT AND PASTORATE 309 


and the same from Glasgow in 1907. He was no fledgling 
doctor, but honored the institutions as they honored him. 

He had never more than a scant reserve of strength, 
and in his fifty-fifth year had an enforced rest of almost a 
year. After this he had an assistant and preached only 
once on the Sunday. 

In 1884 Mrs. McLaren died and his heart never ceased 
to stagger under the blow. He tried on the following Sun- 
day to preach on those “‘who walk in white,’”’ but had to 
give it up. 

He declined the offer of a professorship in his Alma 
Mater, displaying no doubt sound sense in doing so. 

For twenty years he wrote weekly on the current lesson 
for the Sunday School Times, Philadelphia, and testified 
that he found great profit in the discipline of condensation 
which he was obliged to practice. These papers were les- 
sons in sound knowledge and accurate interpretation, 
and greatly extended the understanding and appreciation 
of those parts of the Bible which he treated. 

He had a pressing invitation, supported in private by 
Dr. R. W. Dale, to deliver the Lyman Beecher Lectures 
on Preaching at Yale University, but declined. He proba- 
bly never missed another such opportunity to render a 
conspicuous service to the great cause to which he had so 
unstintedly consecrated his own eminent powers. 

His ministerial jubilee was celebrated in 1896. The oc- 
casion was fragrant with the cordial admiration felt for 
him on every side. Bishop Moorhouse, of the diocese of 
Manchester, Church of England, paid him publicly the 
following unrestrained tribute: ‘‘Thirty years ago I was 
studying with great profit the sermons of the gentleman 
we honor to-day; and I will say this, that in an age which 
has been charmed and inspired by the sermons of Newman 
and Robertson of Brighton, there are no public discourses 


310 PRINCES’ OF “THE CHRIS TEAN 


which for profundity of thought, logical arrangement, 
eloquence of appeal, and power over the human heart, 
exceed in merit those of Dr. McLaren.”’ In his own splen- 
did style he replied in part as follows: ‘‘ You will not won- 
der, I am sure, if what has been said and done this after- 
noon robs me of the power of adequate acknowledgment. 
It is never easy to speak about oneself. One may shift 
to defend oneself from unfavorable criticism, but after 
such overindulgent estimate of one’s qualities and such 
kindly reticence about their accompanying defects as has 
marked the addresses of preceding speakers, I am embar- 
rassed and cannot find words to satisfy myself.”’ 

From time to time, though he had long had the relief 
afforded by an assistant, he had been impelled to consider 
whether he had not better resign his pastorate. But he 
does not have and cannot afford to have any will of his 
own in a matter which at the same time so deeply involves 
the will of God. He has reflected upon words of John Wool- 
man and wished to make them his own: ‘‘There was a care 
on my mind so to pass my time that nothing might hinder 
me from the most steady attention to the voice of the true 
Shepherd.” As for himself, he said concerning the same 
matter at another time: ‘‘ My life has taught me that fore- 
casting is vain. The greatest blessings and sorrows have 
been pushed into my passive hands, and so it will be, I 
expect, to the end. I hope I am learning to leave all in 
God’s hands, and to live by the day. But it is hard to 
strike the right mean between trust and negligence, and I 
am sometimes afraid that | may shirk responsibility and 
omit doing my part on the plea of leaving God to order 
our ways.” 

Between the first Sunday in July, 1858, and the last 
Sunday in June, 1903, there lay a space of full forty-five 
years filled by the continuous pastorate of Alexander 





BOP WAND =PASTORATE ok 


McLaren at the Union Chapel in Manchester. On the 
latter date he said farewell to his pastorate, but seven 
years more of ministry, wide and rich and fruitful, he was 
to exercise ere he died. The text for his farewell sermon 
was 1 Corinthians 15: 1-4: ‘Christ died for our sins ac- 
cording to the Scriptures; . . . he hath been raised 
on the third day according to the Scriptures.’’ Upon these 
principles, principles rooted in the great doctrines of 
human redemption, his whole unsurpassed ministry had 
been based; and on the day of his exit from active pulpit 
service he rejoiced in them for Manchester as Paul had 
rejoiced in them for Corinth. 

On the afternoon of May 5, 1910, he died very quietly 
at the end of a life of eighty-four years’ duration and a 
ministry of nearly sixty-five. 


CARDINAL CHARACTERISTICS 


Dr. McLaren possessed extraordinary natural gifts. 
Sir William Robertson Nicoll regarded him as “out of 
sight the most brilliant all-round man” he ever knew. 
‘‘In any company where he sat,’’ he continues, ‘‘was the 
head of the table. Before you knew he was a prophet you 
were sure he was a king. Who can forget that wonderful 
face, tender and stern, more beautiful and more saintly 
as the years went on, with the lights and shadows sweep- 
ing over it? Who can forget the flash of those magnetic, 
dominating eyes? There was a kind of regal effulgence 
about him in his great moments. He might have been 
anything—soldier, politician, man of letters, man of science, 
and in any profession he would have taken the head.” 
He had a most incisive and discriminating intellect and 
possessed the power of most effective mental application. 
He possessed these powers, but did not lean on them. 
He toiled as terribly as any one-talent man. He brought 


312 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


his manifold gifts into subjection to the law of increased 
capacity to be achieved through the most unremitting ap- 
plication. He never ceased to commit his talents to their 
appointed task. Once when he had to preach in the even- 
ing on shipboard, though he had been in the ministry then 
for more than forty years, he records the fact that he had 
been in his cabin all day long getting ready for the service. 
He could not preach an old sermon. Every old sermon he 
preached became in the process a new one. 

The quintessence of his qualities it is not difficult to 
define: 

1. He was one of the finest examples of the power of 
culture in Christian preaching which the recent pulpit has 
had. Christianity does not directly aim to produce culture, 
but character. Nevertheless, there is in Christian char- 
acter itself an element and a tone of culture. Christianity 
inevitably works toward the higher and finer things in 
character, and this in itself is a process and a means of 
culture. And Christianity should have the power to com- 
mand the culture which it has itself created: but there 
are circles in which due attention has not been paid to this. 
The mere veneer and superficialities of culture, to be sure, 
are not to be allowed and not to be esteemed. But Alex- 


ander McLaren showed the right way. The whole action © 


of his ministry demonstrated that not a man’s body only, 
not alone the qualities of his character, not the gifts of 
his intellect only, but that the highest and finest gifts of 
culture also may be laid on God’s altar and brought into 
preéminent service in the Christian pulpit. A low culture 


in the pulpit should not offend a finer culture in the pew 


when the latter is itself a truly Christian culture, and the 
product it may be of generations of integrity of Christian 
sentiment and devotion. Christianity at its best shrinks 
from the coarse and the vulgar and the bizarre as well as 


PULPIT. AND PASTORATE 313 


from the impure, and the pulpit must be able to build on! 


as high a level as the pew. And this Dr. McLaren was’ 


conspicuously able to do. He was so cultured in manner 
and character as to shrink from vulgarity and ostentation 
as from things unclean. And such in truth they are to 
the culture which is really Christian. Who has not had 
occasion from his own contact with Christian ministers 
sometimes to wish that they were more considerate, if 
not indeed more cultured, in their speech? 

2. Culture he did not leave to do its own work, but his 
culture itself was consecrated to ends beyond its own. 
It is a subtle temptation to the Christian minister to de- 
pend upon his gifts and his graces and not upon grace for 
the accomplishment of the high tasks of his ministry. 
But the tasks have ceased to be high and have already 
become low when this specious but inert paganism invades 
his soul. All a man’s gifts and graces, and his culture too, 
may assume a purely naturalistic level, thereby ceasing in 
any real sense to be employed in a ministry of Christ and 
of the Holy Spirit, but only a ministry of the flesh and of 
human endeavor. Such men must cease to say: “‘By the 
grace of God I am what I am.” 

But McLaren counted his culture, too, and the highest 
refinement of his gifts as subject to the will of God through 
Christ for the service of his ministry. He was accustomed 
to address on notable occasions great audiences in the 
Free Trade Hall, Manchester. It was a custom of the 
audience to receive him standing on those occasions, and 
with prolonged applause. Leaving the Hall with him after 
one such occasion a companion ventured to ask him whether 
he could recall what his thoughts were as he stood waiting 

for the applause to subside that he might begin his speech. 
' “Yes, perfectly,’ he promptly replied; ‘‘I all but heard the 
words, ‘It is a very small thing that I should be judged 


314 PRINCES OF THE: GHRisiias 


of you, or of man’s judgment; he that judgeth me is the 
Lord.’’’ A man who can thus take the finest achievements 
of such a ministry as McLaren’s and humbly and resolutely 
lay them at the feet of Christ need never be afraid that his 
gifts will betray him into foolish pride or vainglory, or 
that he will ever offer incense to self. 

3. Concentration Gladstone gave as the word which 
conveyed the master secret of his life. Dr. McLaren might 
have done the same. He concentrated his life upon his 
ministry; and he concentrated his ministry upon his pulpit. 
‘‘T began my ministry,” he said, ‘‘with the determination 
of concentrating all my available strength on the work, 
the proper work of the Christian ministry, the pulpit. 
I believe that the secret of success for all our ministers lies 
very largely in the simple charm of concentrating their 
intellectual force on the one work of preaching.” Even 
in his Southampton days he kept close to his own vineyard; 
and in later years it did not grow easier to hale him forth 
to other fields. All other service which he could render 
he thought he might best render through his pulpit. Speak- 
ing in response to the addresses given at his jubilee, he said 
with reference to his relation to the civic life of Manchester: 
‘‘While I have sought—and I can honestly say I have 
sought—to do my. work here, as a citizen of no mean city, 
I should be untrue to my deepest convictions if I did not 
take this opportunity of emphasizing that I have volun- 
tarily limited myself, as some of my kind friends have 
thought far too rigidly, to my own proper work as a Chris- 
tian teacher. I have been so convinced that I was best 
serving all the varied social, economical, and, if I may use 
a tabooed word here, political interests that are dear to 
me by preaching what I conceived to be the gospel of Jesus 
Christ that I have limited myself to that work. And I 
am sure with a growing conviction day by day—and I 


BULPIT VANDs PASTORATE js 


would take this meeting as no small demonstration of the 
truth of the conviction—that so we Christian ministers 
best serve our generation.’’ Further demonstration of 
the truth of his conviction has been furnished in the fact 
of the extension of the influence of his ministry over a 
wider field and through a longer time. No lecture hall or 
platform could at all compete with his pulpit. ‘‘First 
of all, and above all things else, he was a preacher of the 
Eternal Word.”’ The subjects of the day did not invade 
his pulpit. He was not unaware of the application of the 
Christian gospel to the multifarious interests of human 
society. But he saw that it was, first of all, in the faithful 
preaching of that gospel in the clear affirmation of its 
permanent principles that it found its surest application 
to all needs, and this gave him the clue to his course. It 
was just because his preaching was timeless that it had so 
sure an application to his own time. It was just so that the 
preaching of Jesus and Paul applied to slavery and the other 
enormous evils of their time. Nothing is transformed until 
men are transformed. ‘He created his own place by the 
sheer power of his preaching. People had to come to him; 
he did not go to them. Such was his attractive power that 
he ministered to one of the greatest and most influential 
congregations in Manchester. But he did not bow his 
proud head one inch to win any hearing.”’ 

4. To abide in his own and pay no price for a spurious 
publicity, to consecrate the fullness of his varied ability 
to the will of God and to care not for any other will save as 
that too was made righteous, to concentrate upon the 
major interests of his ministry and to walk in that narrow 
path undisturbed by the voices that called him to less 
important, though perchance to more popular tasks—all 
this required a maturity in the quality of his courage which 
not every man in his position is able to command. He had 





316 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


already effectually effaced self and self-interest, and after 
that there was nothing for which he needed to care. Per- 
haps it was this more than anything else which gave him 
courage to abide so steadfastly in his course. The man 
who is ever squinting his eye for an opportunity to cast 
an anchor to the windward of self-advantage is always 
uneasy and is never really brave. That a man should 
effectively efface himself requires courage. But the very 
act of self-effacement rebounds upon the courage which 
gave it effect and improves its quality. ‘‘To efface oneself 
is one of a preacher’s first duties,’ he had said to his people 
in closing his official ministry at Manchester; and few 
ministers ever uttered such words with a clearer certifica- 
tion of their truth and sincerity, facing, as he did, those 
who, above all others, could best know the authority where- 
with he spoke. He has been credited with always saying 
no; but he had the courage to say yes or no as the occasion 
required. ‘‘The calm, unsolicitous endeavor after the per- 
fection of our nature, and the committal to God of the 
instrument when it has been tempered, to use where and 
when he pleases,” a discerning writer has said, ‘‘is a noble 
achievement of faith.’’ And it is a noble achievement of 
courage too. And this was McLaren, whether his achieve- 
ment is to be credited to faith or to courage or to the two 
in their conjoint and intimate action. 


HOMILETICAL VALUES 


Few men have acquired as has Dr. McLaren the character 
of a preacher to preachers. This is another of the rewards 
he won without seeking. In making himself a preacher of 
the gospel he made himself'a preacher to preachers. Testi- 
monies to his value to preachers read like a list prepared 
by a skilled advertiser: ‘‘I am constrained to say that Alex- 
ander McLaren is the greatest preacher and the greatest 


sagt et 


Reid AN De PASTORATE Subyy 


writer of sermons for preachers and people alive to-day in 
the English-speaking world.’’ ‘Alexander McLaren stands 
in the front rank of living preachers. His discourses should 
be read by young ministers as masterpieces of homiletic 
oratory.’ ‘‘Nosermons I know are better worthy a preach- 
er’s steady study than those of Dr. McLaren of Man- 
chester.’’ “‘I regard the sermons of Dr. McLaren the best 
models for the pulpit of any in our generation.” ‘‘Dr. 
Alexander McLaren’s sermons contain the complete round 
of Christian doctrine and precept and would be invaluable 
to teachers, theological students, and preachers.” ‘‘I 
have not the slightest doubt that Dr. McLaren is the fore- 
most sermonizer in the world. . . . He is a model 
for all preachers in his textual treatment of the Scriptures 
and his evangelical appeal to men.”’ ‘‘ More than any other 
preacher, except Robertson, he has altered the whole manner 
of preaching in England and America, and that immensely 
for the better.”’ In terms ‘such as these have spoken such 
men as S. Parkes Cadman, David J. Burrell, Wayland 
Hoyt, J. B. Remensnyder, N. D. Hillis, R. S. McArthur, 
and others. They spoke in warm admiration of a still 
living man; but it may be doubted whether a single one 
of them would now modify his estimate. 

The causes of his success, for the most part, lie open to 
easy discovery. 

1. ‘‘The whole pith of homiletics,” as he himself ex- 
pressed it, he found in a familiar utterance of one of the 
Psalms: ‘‘While I was musing the fire burned, then spake 
I with my tongue.” This to him was the very genesis of 
the sermon. The homiletical freshness and suggestiveness 
. of the Scriptures he appreciated and appropriated to an 
unusual degree. The Bible was the fountain which kept 
his homiletical streams running to the full. When asked 
once whether he would tell the secret of his success in the 


318 PRINCES (OF THE CHRIS iia 


ministry he reluctantly replied—for it seemed to him like 
bringing the secret things out to the public gaze—that it 
must be counted as above all else due to the fact that he 
had for at least one hour every day sat, Bible in hand, 
quietly in his study intent upon finding what was the will 
of God concerning him and his ministry. At this altar 
he had kindled afresh the burning of his spirit every morn- 
ing. 

His preaching may be defined as having, first of all, a 
broad and accurately determined Scriptural basis. He 
was a careful and diligent student of the original languages 
of Scripture, and the knowledge he gained of these he em- 
ployed as the groundwork of his homiletics. He laid his 
foundation in the verities of revelation. ‘‘The sermon is 
an exact exposition of the text.” If one took a text, it was 
said, and went to see what McLaren said on it, he would 
either have to take McLaren’s outline or get him another 
text. ‘‘He had an extraordinary gift of analyzing a text.” 
He had the courage to stand up in a Christian pulpit in 
the nineteenth century with a ‘‘Thus saith the Lord’”’ 
upon his lips. 

Furthermore, he accepted the Bible not only in its 
doctrinal integrity, but also with a firm reliance upon its 
historic credibility. His doctrine of the death of Christ 
was firmly based on the fact of Christ’s death. It was the 
death that made the doctrine and not the doctrine that 
contrived the death. His doctrine of the resurrection of 
Christ was firmly based on the fact of Christ’s resurrection. 
It was the fact that made the doctrine and not the doctrine 
that made the fact. The Atonement was to him not only 
a doctrine, but a fact, a fact deliberately and designedly 
accomplished through the death of Christ, so that without 
the death there would have been no atonement. Propitia- 
tion for the sins of the world is a fact signed and sealed by 


Pe otra N DD PASTORATE 319 


the fact of the cross. There was something which the life 
and teachings of Jesus without his death could not accom- 
plish, yet something which most indubitably needed to be 
accomplished and could only be accomplished through 
his death and resurrection. He has no confidence in the 
triumph and continuance of a Church which does not go 
back and root itself in a sepulcher left empty by One who 
himself had the power over death. He has no confidence 
in a Christian salvation which does not require the whole 
sacrifice of the cross. So he believed, and so he unfalter- 
ingly preached 

2. Again, he preached for the total reconstruction of the 
moral life of man, for the building up of the Christian man 
‘‘unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” - 
He reénacted in his own ministry that great statute of the 
apostolic ministry that the ministry itself is given ‘‘for 
the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, 
unto the building up of the body of Christ: till we all at- 
tain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of 
the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure 
of the stature of the fullness of Christ.’”’ This, as Dr. 
John Brown, in his “Puritan Preaching in England,”’ has 
so admirably pointed out, is the true practical preaching. 
A more acute and discriminating estimate of McLaren 
than that which Dr. Brown gives in this connection has 
nowhere appeared. “I am not able to recall,’ he says, 
“any other preacher of either Puritan or modern times so 
clearly constructive in his teachings on the new life Christ 
came to give us. There is surely what may be called a 
science of the spiritual life, dealing with the facts and forces 
of the inner world as revealed from God and verified and 
confirmed by the experience of man. What is this life? 
How do we get it? In what way is it related to the already 
existing life? Along what lines is it developed, and by what 


320 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN® 


supernatural forces? . . . Some kind of teaching is 


called for which shall be equally removed from the shallow, — 


easy-going platitudes of the mere revivalist on the one 
hand, and the too vague, commonplace utterances of many 
ordinary preachers on the other. And it is here, as it seems 
to me, that Dr. McLaren’s distinctive excellence as a 


preacher shows itself. Through a long public life he has 


been a continuous, profound, accurate, and prayerful 
student of God’s revelation and, at the same time, a close 


observer of the actual facts of religious experience as found — 


in the living men and women who make up the Church 
of God to-day. In this way, so far as the nature of the sub- 
ject permits, he has attained to something like a clear and 
coherent science of that spiritual life which is derived from 
Christ and maintained in the soul by the Spirit of God; 
and, as we might expect, this science underlies all his 
teachings.”’ 
of practical preaching. 

3. Valuable concomitants to his preaching, if indeed 
they are not to be counted as integral in their value, were 
his style of speech and the manner of his delivery. He was 
reckoned, though entirely without any such design on his 
part, as a chief literary influence of Manchester and as 
the John Ruskin of the English pulpit. When he first 
began to preach he would sometimes hesitate in his speech, 


All the devout may wish for more of this kind — 


so intent was he upon finding just the right word. And — 


he sometimes ceased to speak at the end of about twelve 


minutes, frankly stating to his audience that he had no ~ 
more to say. Happily he had no gift of going on when © 


there was no more to say. But when he had trained him- 
self and had sought and found, he used the English language 
with a perspicuity, a precision, an energy, and oftentimes 
with an elegance which were truly admirable. Intellect, 
imagination, taste, as they appeared among his gifts, 


Mw lie ANOS PASTORATE Spl! 


appeared also in his speech. ‘‘He acquired the rare faculty 
of speaking better English than he could write.” Run 
through a few of his sermons—it might as well be the 
seven on the Beatitudes—for brief extracts as examples 


of his expression: ‘‘The man who has been down into the! . 


dungeons of his own character”’; “All the song birds of the} 
spring are silent in the winter of the soul”; “‘That one: 
encyclopedia of blessings, the possession of the kingdom’ 
of heaven”’; ‘‘Grace is attracted by the sense of need, just | 
as the lifted finger of the lightning rod brings down fire | 
from heaven’’; ‘‘Men may betake themselves to trivial, 
or false, unworthy, low alleviations, and fancy that they 
are comforted when they are only diverted’’; ‘‘The water) 
of the cataract would not flash into rainbow tints against 
the sunshine unless it had been dashed into spray against 
black rocks’’; ‘‘The one thing which ought to move a man 
to sadness is his own character’’; ‘“‘If we reflect upon the 
history of our own feelings and realization of God’s presence 
with us, we shall see that impurity always drew a mem- 
brane over the eye of our souls or cast a mist of invisibility 
over the heavens.”’ 

Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, of New York, fell unawares 
upon a volume of McLaren’s sermons and was captivated. 
He tells of reading one of the sermons and continues with 
an account of the preacher’s action in the pulpit when he 
heard him: ‘‘That sermon wrought a revolution in our 
apprehension of Christianity and in our preaching. When 
we planned to cross the Atlantic, we said, ‘We will see and 
hear McLaren,’ and we did it, going two hundred miles 
for the purpose. ‘The Union Chapel’ was a brick building 
seating fifteen hundred people. Two thousand were packed 
into it that day, the people crowding in chairs close up 
to and back of the pulpit. The preacher then was in his 


sixty-first year. In personal appearance he was thin, 
21 


Se PRINCES OF -THE CHR Eat 


tall, spare, with an attractive face. . . He did not 
look clerical. He wore no pulpit gown, not even the minis- 
terial white cravat. In preaching he had no manuscript 
or notes before him. In the introduction he clearly an- 
nounced his subject, and told his hearers how—. e., in 
what order—he proposed to present it. Soon his subject 
possesses him and he takes fire. His thought transforms 
him. His voice becomes resonant, tender, impressive. 
It seems as if God is speaking to you. Every person in 
the house is held in solemn and impressive awe of the 
truth. ‘That is preaching,’ I said, ‘and we have not heard 
the like in Europe.’”’ 

4. His method of preparation was that of a man who 
might have had to make up for a lack of gifts through 
painstaking effort. His striving after perfection in the 
preacher’s art began with his ministry and failed only 
when he ceased to preach. His sermons are models both 
in content and form, and unprepared sermons are not of 
that sort. He held fast to the certainties, eschewed sub- 
jects of the day, and his desire for souls simplified his 
speech. All this lies in the preparation of the man himself 
and precedes all immediate homiletic preparation. In 
the beginning of his ministry he formed a resolution that 
he would not write his sermons, but would think and feel 
them. What he did write consisted of a few compressed 
notes. He liked to write a few sentences of introduction. 
If he had heads, he worded them carefully. The closing 
sentences he preferred to write. He did not adhere to what 
he did write. ‘I make no attempt,”’ he said, “‘to reproduce 
more than the general course of thought and constantly 
find that the best bits of my sermon make themselves in 
preaching. I do adhere to my introductory sentences, 
which serve to shove me off into deep water; beyond that 
I let the moment shape the thing. Expressions I do not 





t 
’ 


ba ——— 


PULPID AND, PASTORATE 323 


prepare; if I can get the fire alight, that is what I care for 
most.’”’ This was not chosen as an easy method, as he 
himself testifies: ‘‘It costs quite as much time in prepara- 
tion as writing, and a far greater expenditure of nervous 
energy in delivery; but I am sure that it is best for me, and 
equally sure that everybody has to find out his own way.” 

5. There will probably be no more lasting result of his 
ministry than his conspicuous achievement as an expository 
preacher. He made himself one of the great exemplars of 
the power and effectiveness of expository preaching through 
a long stretch of recent time, and the end of that time is 
not yet. It is interesting to know how his work in Biblical 
exposition in the broader and more distinctive sense began. 
He used often to find it difficult to choose a text that suited 
him, and he would sigh for the old Scottish pulpit habit 
of lecturing through one of the books of the Bible. On one 
such occasion Mrs. McLaren advised that he try the ex- 
periment and suggested the Epistle to the Colossians as 
suitable for the purpose. The sermons thus prepared 
formed the nucleus of the volume on Colossians in the 
‘‘Expositor’s Bible,’ one of the finest pieces of work on 
the exposition of a book of the Bible to be found in the 
English language. He prepared the three volumes on the 
Psalms in the same series. He made his treatment truly 
expository, leaving questions of date and authorship all 
but untouched, not because he was not capable of handling 
critical questions, but because he “‘ventured to think that: 
the deepest and most precious elements in the Psalms are 
very slightly affected by the answers to these questions, 
and that expository treatment of the bulk of the Psalter 
may be separated from the critical, without condemning 
the former to incompleteness.’”’ His later and wider series, 
the general title of which was ‘“‘Expositions of Holy Scrip- 
ture,’’ was undertaken at the suggestion of Dr. Nicoll, the 


324 PRINCES OF THE PUEPIT 


general editor of the ‘‘Expositor’s Bible,’’ by whom, as 
he himself says, McLaren’s first volume of printed sermons 
had been literally dragged from him. This series he had 
nearly completed when he died. 

The silent emphases of a man’s life are often greater 
than those which are spoken. Without saying much about 
it or in any way obtruding the matter, Dr. McLaren em- 
phasized the power for holiness and for character as pre- 
ceding the power for service. Addressing the Baptist 
World Congress meeting in London in the summer of 1905, 
he said, referring particularly to the desire for a general 
religious revival: ‘‘ Power for service is second. Power for 
holiness and character is first, and only the man who has 
let the Spirit of God work his will upon him, and do what 
he will, has a right to expect that he will be filled with the 
Holy Ghost and with power.’ Great acts of Christian 
consecration and service must proceed from their true 
source in a single-minded desire for the perfecting of the 
will of God in ourselves, and after that our service will 
take care of itself. Here, as elsewhere, the man speaks out 
of the secret places of his own life. | 

‘Perhaps no preacher,” says Dr. Nicoll, speaking still 
of McLaren, “‘has ever plowed so straight and sharp a 
furrow across the field of life, never looking aside, never 
turning back, maintaining his power and his freshness 
through all the long years that stretch between his early 
beginning and the last day.’”’ And many a plowman in 
the same fields, else weary and discouraged, takes heart 
from the shining track McLaren has made and goes more 
cheerily to his task. 


XII 


WILLIAM BOOTH? 
(1829-1902) 
APPRENTICED TO POVERTY AND PREACHING 


WILLIAM Bootu, as the London Times said at his death, 
was born of “unrecorded parentage.’ His ancestry has 
never been traced beyond his grandfather. At thirteen 
he was left the only son of ‘‘a widowed and impoverished 
mother.’”’ Thus in his childhood he was condemned to 
wrestle with the poverty which it was his mission in life 
so greatly to alleviate. He was not born to fortune, nor 
was he cradled among the great, but he lifted himself on 
lowly foundations to the heights of the truly great. He 
had so good a mother that, though he accepted in general 
the doctrine of human depravity, her patience and self- 
sacrificing devotion seemed to constitute her an exception 
to the rule. A lad rescued from the ‘General Slocumb”’ 
disaster in Chicago River said: ‘‘My mother gave me a 
life preserver; that’s how I got saved. I guess she didn’t 
have none for herself, ’cause they can’t find her.”’ ‘‘ Never 
mind me,’’ was the constant refrain of the mother of Wil- 
liam Booth, whatever the time, the place, or the circum- 
stances. But all her unselfishness and devotion could 
not relieve him of the full burden of his apprenticeship to 
hardship and poverty. From his thirteenth to his nine- 
teenth year he served a slavish and unprofitable apprentice- 
ship to which his father had bound him before he died. 
At the end of this service he not only found himself without 
remuneration for his toil and weakened in character by 
the hurtful influences which had been thrown about him, 


iReprinted from Methodist Quarterly Review, July, 1917. 
(325) 


326 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


but he was as unfitted for any special trade as if he had 
never been apprenticed. It was this state of his case that 
first brought him to London. 

The place of his birth was Nottingham, and the date was 
April 10, 1829. His father was an Anglican Churchman, 
and William was baptized a member of the Establishment. 
He early abandoned this connection, however, and began 
to attend a Wesleyan chapel, where he was converted at 
the age of fifteen. He'was wrought upon quite independent- 
ly of human effort by the direct agency of the Holy Spirit, 
and there was created in him a great thirst for a new life. 
The decisiveness, the distinctness, and the attendant 
circumstances of his conversion he remembered all through 
his life as if it had been a transaction of yesterday. Within 
six hours, as he afterwards told a representative of The 
Christian World, he was going in and out of the cottages 
in the back streets, preaching the gospel of that grace which 
in the freshness and wonder of its saving power rested upon 
him. He not only began thus at once to preach, but he 
made an immediate and complete separation from the 
godless world, and soon began to despise everything the 
world had to offer him. These were the initial certainties 
and decisions of his religious life, and they were his con- 
fidence and his support to the end of his days. Academic 
criticism of Christian documents and institutions had for 
him no existence. He knew for himself, and waited on the 
voice of no man or school. 

From the first he had a genius for discerning opportuni- 
ties and improvising pulpits. Standing on a box or a barrel 
in the poorest quarters of Nottingham while still a mere 
youth, he proclaimed to the motley assembly in all its 


moral vileness and imbecility the gospel of a clean life. 


While bound as an apprentice, although his hours of labor 
extended from 7 A.M. to 7 P.M., he would leave his toil as 





RUE RL EEAN De PAS DORA DE 327 


soon as the hour permitted and take up the new toil of 
visiting the sick, conducting street and cottage meetings, 
and comforting the dying, until it was near the stroke of 
midnight before he reached his bed, from which he must 
hasten again in the morning so as to be at his work at the 
appointed time. He would rush along the streets, return- 
ing to his employment from his forty minutes of dinner 
time, reading his Bible or Finney’s ‘‘ Revival Lectures.” 
In the midst of all this he received, as he says, from the 
leading men of the Church of which he was a member 
‘plenty of cautions,” for they quailed at his every new 
departure, but not one word of encouragement. Yet this 
Society was at the time literally his heaven on earth. 
“Truly, I thought then there was one God, that John 
Wesley was his prophet, and that the Methodists were 
his special people.’’ His conversion, however, had, as he 
himself expressed it, in a moment made him a preacher of 
the gospel, and the qualms of leading members in their easy- 
going complacence could not deter him. The liberty of 
his action and his freedom from any one set of plans were 
largely determined by the influence of James Caughey, 
an American Methodist evangelist, who visited Notting- 
ham. This was one of those unsought interventions of 
providence which so often come to the man who is willing 
to have God: use him to the uttermost and in his own way. 

But truly Booth was beset with difficulty both before 
and behind. His master ordered him to work on Sunday, 
in spite of his declared resolution that he would not. He 
was discharged and set adrift in the streets, but at the end 
of a week was restored, his master having wisely concluded 
that this same obstinate conscientiousness might prove to 
be a good quality in a servant. And so he was not only 
restored to his position, but advanced in responsibility. 

In 1849 he went to London, being at the time an ac- 


328 PRINCES ‘OF THE CHRISFEAN 


credited local preacher in the Wesleyan Church. Heie, 
in an old tent set up in a disused burial ground, he found 
an opportunity to preach to the outcasts of the ill-famed 
and neglected Whitechapel district. He continued in this 
place for twelve years, and then, finding himself in need of 
ampler accommodations, he removed to a chapel in Gates- 
head. Criticism of his methods only aroused him to more 
resolute measures. Being unwilling to subordinate his 
work to the control of the Wesleyan body, there was a 
severance of his connection with them, and he united with 
the Methodist New Connection and was ordained to their 
ministry in 1858. In three years more he threw off all 
denominational bonds and entered on his world-wide 
mission. The break occurred in a final scene in a session 
of Conference held in Liverpool. The climax of the scene 
came when Mrs. Booth cried out in the meeting an em- 
phatic ‘‘Never!”’ in confirmation of her husband’s publicly 
expressed resolution not to continue even for one year more 
in submission to the regulations of the body. The break 
was made, but it was one of the most perplexing steps of his 
life. Every avenue seemed to be closed against him, and 
he only knew to trust in God and to wait till he should see 
his salvation. Really, neither he nor the Church could 
scarcely be censured for what had occurred. It is now very 
clear that God had plans which neither party to the pain- 
ful transaction could at that time have known. 


LISTING FOR THE WAR 


Having broken his Church connections, he now found 
employment as an independent evangelist. He still had 
a lonely path to follow, for the Churches were unsympa- 
thetic toward his methods, and even to some extent toward 
his ideas of revivalism. He protested that his only desire 
was tolead the lost ones to the great Shepherd who, through 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 529 


him, was seeking them, and questioned why he should find 
it so difficult ‘“‘to get or remain within any existing fold.” 

The Booths had settled in London in order to have some 
fixed resting place for their children and in the expecta- 
tion that they would find there a field for the service they 
so eagerly desired to render. Mrs. Booth had joined so 
heartily and courageously in all her husband’s plans and 
desires that she deserves henceforth to be counted a full 
partner in all his endeavor. Booth himself was ‘waiting 
upon God and wondering what would happen,”’ but yearn- 
ing above all else over the unchurched masses. While 
he waited he received an invitation to undertake some 
services in a tent in an old burial ground in Whitechapel, 
the expected missioner having been detained by an illness. 
That night the Salvation Army was born, though it was 
not named and set upon its full career until later. When 
he had seen those masses of poor people and had labored 
successfully for the salvation of many of them in that first 
service, his whole heart went out to them. He walked 
back to his West End home and said to his wife: ‘‘O Kate, 
I have found my destiny! These are the people for whose 
salvation I have been longing all these years. As I passed 
by the doors of the flaming gin palaces to-night I seemed 
to hear a voice sounding in my ears: ‘Where can you go 
and find such heathen as these, and where is there so great 
a need for your labors?’ And there and then in my soul 
I offered myself and you and the children up to this great 
work. Those people shall be our people, and they shall have 
our God for their God.” 

These early meetings in Whitechapel assumed many of 
the characteristics of the more fully developed Salvation 
Army methods. After six years of hard work, he still had 
a very meager outfit. For the Sunday-night meetings he 
had nothing better than ‘‘a small covered alley attached 


330 PRINCES: OF THE (CHRIST iA 


to a drinking saloon,”’ and for the week nights ‘‘some old 
discarded chapels and a tumble-down penny theater.” 
After a while he secured the ground where a famous drink- 
ing saloon had burned out, and rebuilt and fitted the place 
as a center for his work. Later his headquarters were 
established for ten years in a large covered market in 
Whitechapel Road. He finally got a firm and permanent 
footing with the establishment of a headquarters that cost 
three thousand five hundred pounds, located in one of the 
main thoroughfares of East London. 

But there was no intention to forsake the Whitechapel 
flotsam and jetsam. And what a district that Whitechapel 
was! It was one of those great and pitiful city scenes of 
humanity sunk to the dregs. “Just look here,”’ said the 
General to his oldest son, then a boy of thirteen, as he led 
him late one Sunday evening through the swinging doors 
of a typical public-house into the crowded bar, where 
there was the usual aggregation of toughs, with a congrega- 
tion of women besides, and mothers with their babes and 
little children. ‘‘These are the people I want you to live 
and labor for,”’ said he to the boy. This was Whitechapel; 
but it was a fit ground for the training of soldiers. Here 
they learned both aggression and restraint. Here they 
learned to give and take. Here they acquired courage and 
learned self-control. Here they felt the extreme down- 
ward pull of the roaring and insatiate tides of evil. And 
here they felt the upward swell and lift of the mightier 
tides of grace. ‘‘Stop, Charles, and learn how to preach,” 


said John Wesley to his brother Charles as they passed - 


where a fishwoman had unloosed her irate and voluble 
tongue. It is a training that many a preacher needs, and 
the Salvation Army preachers do not fail to get it. In 
Whitechapel the Army had at first the opposition even 
of the police, but they fought with the weapons that al- 





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POC RMG AN DEP AS TORA TE Bide 


ways win. And now the Salvation lad or lassie has no 
firmer friend than the policeman on his beat. 

Booth’s first thought as his work developed was not to 
form a separate or permanent organization, but to con- 
stitute an evangelistic agency, and to send his converts to 
the Churches. But he said that to this there were three 
main obstacles: “‘(1) They would not go where they were 
sent; (2) they were not wanted when they did go; (3) I 
soon found that I wanted them myself.’’ What effect the 
last reason, consciously or unconsciously, had on the 
other two remains an unsolved problem. It is not our 
business to say how his life and work should have been 
ordered, but to find how they were ordered. 


THE MILITANCY OF THE MOVEMENT 


At this stage there were two lines of development which 
the work must follow if it was to be extensive and permanent: 
there must be provided leaders for new centers, and there 
must be found a better basis of financial support. The 
development of leaders was secured by means of three 
considerations: (1) Through William Booth’s fine judgment 
of the quality of his converts; (2) through his strong trust 
in them; (3) through his thrusting of responsibility upon 
them. After all, what more than this could be desired for 
the compassing of the ends that were sought. In a way 
equally simple and cardinal the problem of financial sup- 
port was solved. It was found that the small gifts of the 
common people, the working people, would suffice if proper- 
ly attended to. And until this day the Salvation Army 
values and stresses this means of support. 

The Christian Mission, as the movement had hitherto 
been called, became the Salvation Army in 1878. Some 
of the evangelists, as the work prospered, began to show a 
desire to form a Church, and to settle down to more quiet 


332 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


and regular ways. But this was not according to their 
leader’s wish. He wanted to go forward at all costs. So 
he called them together and said: ‘My comrades, the 
formation of another Church is not my aim. There are 
plenty of Churches. I want to make an Army. Those 
among you who are willing to help me to realize my purpose 
can stay with me; those who do not, must separate from 
me, and I will help them to find situations elsewhere.” 
All of them went with him. This was in the beginning of 
the year 1877. In July of the same year the last Chris- 
tian Mission Conference was held, when the entire Con- 
ference system was abandoned and the organization as- 
sumed more and more the military form. Toward the 
end of the next year the name “Salvation Army” was 
finally adopted. So to designate the movement was a 
stroke of genius. Christianity itself is militant in spirit, 
and Christian activity is aptly described in military terms. 
The very idea of a ‘‘Salvation Army” was popular and 
commanding, and the army organization was admirably 
adapted to the effectiveness of the movement in its chosen 
field of service. The army uniform was an advantage, 
and drum and tambourine added their acclaim to the 
general note of attack and triumph. It is related that once 
amid the din of tambourines and the shriek of cornets the 
old General noticed in one of his meetings a Quaker sitting 
quietly in his place. The humor of the situation struck 
him immediately, and above the general clamor he shouted 
out, addressing himself to the Quaker: ‘‘ Your people and 
mine have much in common. You add a little quiet; we 
add a little noise!’ Many have not liked the noise, but 
multitudes have found in it the shaking of the torpor of 
their forgotten souls. The whole military fashion of the 
movement has been amply justified in the developments 
which have followed those uncalculated beginnings. 





FULPIT AND “PASTORATE 503 


The Wesleyan Methodist Conference, sitting in London, 
in 1880, invited General Booth to appear before the body 
for an address. He stated two significant things at the 
outset. » “‘I was told,” he said, “‘that ninety-five in every 
hundred in the population of our larger towns and cities 
never crossed the threshold of any place of worship, and 
I thought, ‘Cannot something be done to reach these peo- 
ple with the gospel?’’’ And his next statement gives you 
the dynamic of his great endeavor. ‘I resolved to try,” he 
said, ‘‘and the ‘Salvation Army’ is the outcome of that res- 
olution.”’ The two statements taken together give the con- 
densed history of the beginning of the whole movement. 

Proceeding, he explained the methods of the Army. 
First, he said: ‘‘We do not fish in other people’s waters 
or try to set up a rival sect.”’ He proclaimed that he and 
his helpers were moral scavengers; that they wanted to 
rescue all, but most of all the lowest of the low. They got 
a man, and then his wife got his coat from the pawnshop; 
and if she could not get him a shirt, she bought him a paper 
front; and he got his head up, and perhaps was inclined to 
be a little proud and to want to convert into a chapel the 
rough quarters where he was rescued. But the significant 
thing was that the man rose at once to a higher level. 

In the second place, he said: ‘‘We get at these people 
by adapting our measures.’’ He found bitter prejudice 
among the lower classes against churches and chapels. 
He was sorry for this, but he did not create it; it was a fact. 
He would go into any place, a theater or warehouse or any 
other, if the people would come there. In one village they 
used the pawnshop, and the place received a new name and 
was called ‘‘The Salvation Pawnshop’’; and many souls 
were saved there. He was not the inventor of all the strange 
terms in use in the Army. He did not invent the term 
‘“‘Halleluiah Lassies,” and was somewhat shocked when 


334 PRINCES OF THE. CHRIS DEAN 


he first heard it; but he had telegram after telegram telling 
that no building would contain the crowds that came to 
hear the Lassies. One came because he had a lassie at home, 
another came because he used to call his wife ‘‘ Lassie’’ before 
they were married. And so they came, his end was gained, 
and he did not trouble too much about the proprieties. 

In the third place, he said: “‘We set the converts to 
work.’ At this, after the English fashion, there were cries 
of ‘‘Hear!”’ “‘Hear!’? This point he made very plain: 
‘‘As soon as a man gets saved, we put him up to say so; 
and in his testimony lies much of the power of our work.” 
He related the case of one of the Lassies who was holding 
a meeting in one of the large towns when she was accosted 
by a conceited rough, who said: ‘What does an ignorant 
girl like you know about religion? I know more than you 
do... I can’ sdy the Iord’s' Prayer in’ Latin.” “OP but, 
she replied, ‘‘I can say more than that. I can say the Lord 
has saved my soul in English.’”’ Then the Conference 
laughed and cheered. 

Lastly, he said: ‘‘We succeed by dint of hard work.”’ 
He was accustomed to tell his people that hard work and 
holiness would succeed anywhere. These were two cardinal 
points in Salvation Army practice and experience. In 
such work as they had undertaken one could not succeed 
without the other, neither the work without the holiness 
nor the holiness without the work. 


THE STRATEGY OF SERVICE 


Articles of War were drawn up for the enlistment of 
soldiers and for their guidance in the goodly warfare. These 
articles constituted a potent document. They embodied 
a creed which definitely committed the Army to the fun- 
damentals of Christian belief. There was a promise to 
abstain from drink and from all evil habits, resorts, com- 





Ruger oAND PASTORATE leis, 


pany, language, etc. And there was a solemn promise to 
obey the lawful orders of all officers, and never on any 
consideration to oppose the interests of the Army. 

While all these plans were in earnest operation within 
the Army, opposition was equally earnest from without. 
The impact of public opinion, silent or expressed, was felt 
against the movement on almost every side as crude, ill- 
considered, and unworthy. The methods of John the 
Baptist were not approved by the public opinion of the 
time, and neither were those of Jesus. John Wesley and 
his Methodists were not at first the favorites of magistrates 
and ministers, and neither were William Booth and his 
Salvationists. Those who subsisted on the vices of the poor 
whom Booth was reclaiming of course opposed. This is 
their fixed attitude toward any reform. If men reform, 
their business goes; and they must have business. Press 
and pulpit, bulwarks of conservatism and opponents of 
radical change, were critical of method and movement, 
and were in the ranks of the opposition. Culture was of- 
fended, and social rank, for the most part, passed by on the 
other side. And, as is usually the case in such circum- 
stances, some respectable citizens were drawn into the 
camp of those who felt constrained to oppose such rude 
ways of accomplishing questionable results. But the 
Army’s only answer was: 


We’re marching on to war, we are, we are, we are: 
We care not what the people think, nor what they say we are. 


Booth himself: met it all with patience, self-control, and 
courage. Persecution and opposition made them friends. 
John Bright, brave and good always, wrote to Mrs. Booth: 


The people who mob you would doubtless have mobbed the apostles. 
Your faith and patience will prevail. The ‘‘craftsmen”’ who find ‘their 
craft in danger,’’ ‘‘the high priests and elders of the people,’’ who seold- 
fashioned counsels are disregarded by newly arrived stirrers-up of men, 


336 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


always complain; and then the governors and magistrates, who may 
‘‘care for none of these things,’’ but who always act ‘‘in the interests of 
the public peace,’’ think it best to ‘‘straightly charge these men to speak 
no more” of Christ. 

Prosecutions by the police brought them legal advantages 
at last and high official recognition both in Church and 
State. In the House of Lords and elsewhere the Lord 
Chancellor, Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, Archbishop 
Tait of Canterbury, Bishop Lightfoot of Durham, and 
others spoke in their behalf. At any rate, their critics found 
it easier to criticize than to take their place in the slums 
and do their work. As Mr. Harold Begbie has remarked: 


It will not do to say that by adopting vulgar methods and appealing 
to vulgar people, General Booth established his universal kingdom of 
emotional religion. Let the person inclined to think in this way dress 
himself in fantastic garments, take a drum, and march through the streets 
shouting ‘“‘Halleluiah.’’ There is no shorter cut to humility. 

Most of the reformers of the world might have invited 
their critics to take this same short cut to humility. Mr. 
Begbie has spoken further to the same effect in this matter: 

Let us be generous and acknowledge, now that it is too late to cheer 
his heart, that General Booth accomplished a work quite wonderful and 
quite splendid, a work unique in the records of the human race. Let us 
be frank, and say that we ourselves could have done nothing like it. Let 
us forget our intellectual superiority, and, instead of criticizing, endeavor 
to see as it stands before us, and as it really is, the immense marvel of his 
achievement. Our canons of taste, our notions of propriety, will change 
and cease to be. The saved souls of humanity will persist forever. 


The remarkable development of the Army in America, 
in Australia, in India, in Scandinavia, in Africa, in Japan, 
and elsewhere, is a matter of fact open to the knowledge 
of any man who will take a little pains. The achievements 
of the Salvationists in India alone, where they became 
the able and valued assistants of the British Government, 
constitute a romance which is worthy of that weird land 
of romance and of dream. An ardent supporter of their 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 337 


endeavor, though not himself one of them, has said: ‘I 
have seen in India whole tribes of criminal races, num- 
bering millions, and once the despair of the Indian Govern- 
ment, living happy, contented, and industrial lives under 
the flag of the Salvation Army.’’ When General Booth 
died, the Army had been organized in fifty countries, and 
through its operations was binding the nations together; 
and the bond of their union was their outcasts. And wars 
will not cease until the nations are bound together by 
human cords, and not by those which are merely political, 
or constitutional, or military, or commercial, or intellectual, 
or diplomatic. ‘‘How much is a man better than a sheep!”’ 
The nations will persist in the effort to write their history 
on ’Change; but the destiny of nations is determined at 
last in closest connection with the interests of the poor. Not 
until ‘“‘the poor have the gospel preached to them”’ will the 
kingdom of God fully come; and until the kingdom comes, 
the governments of this world are not established. The so- 
cial work of the Salvation Army is better than the Civic 
Improvement Society for the improvement of the town. 


THE LEGACY OF AN ILLUSTRIOUS LIFE 


William Booth died on August 20, 1912. Kings and 
queens mourned in the shadow which his death cast upon 
their thrones, and the struggling masses of mankind, from 
the slummy purlieus of Nottingham to the sunny plains 
of India, poured out their tears to his memory. Queen 
Alexandra telegraphed: “‘I beg you and your family to 
accept my deepest and most heartfelt sympathy in the ir- 
reparable loss you and the nation have sustained in the 
death of your great, good, and never-to-be-forgotten father, 
a loss which will be felt throughout the whole civilized 
world. But, thank God, his work will live forever!’’ 


Messages of similar import came to Bramwell Booth, as 
22 | 


338 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


his father’s successor at the head of the Army, from the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Mayor of London, 
the King of Denmark, the President of the United States, 
and others. Mr. Harold Begbie says that it was ‘‘ perhaps 
the most universal grief ever known in the history of man- 
kind.’ What were the special qualities of the man who 
thus bereaved mankind when he died? | 

1. He was a man who lived in the power of the de- 
monstrable realities of the spiritual world. William Booth 
was not one of those semiagnostics who will allow that 
God exists, but you cannot prove his existence. To him 
nothing else was so demonstrably real as the fundamental 
verities of the Christian faith. If anything in this world 
is real, it is the moral nature of man; and if anything is 
real to the conscience and to the total moral nature of man, 
it is the saving grace of Jesus Christ. The profoundest 
change that goes on in this world is the transformation of 
the corrupt moral nature, the cleansing of the defiled con- 
science, of man. British kings and queens might change, 
and they do change, but the government of God does not 
change. And it was the firmness of the grasp of his ex- 
perience and his faith upon this fact that enabled William 
Booth to do for the masses what government without his 
aid could not do. For these high realities of the spiritual 
world he brought down to the level of the need of the 
masses. He got a firm hold on the great truth which 
lives through every generation in its soddenness, that any 
force which is to move mankind must regard man’s nature 
as spiritual as well as material; and that this sign of the 
predominant spirituality of human nature attaches to the 
poor, the humble, the ignorant, and the submerged, as 
truly as to those who live in the sunshine of worldly pros- 
perity. Booth himself was converted at fifteen, and at 
sixty the time and place of the great transaction are glorious 





EUELPIT ANDY PASTORATE 339 


still. ‘‘Out of this idea of conversion, as not only the most 
powerful motive force in life, but as a force which was, so 
to speak, waiting to be applied to all, arose the whole Salva- 
tion Army movement.” The center of life was the heart, 
and the heart needed renewal. He was insistent upon the 
necessity for a cleansed heart, and for a will wholly devoted © 
to God. He laid tremendous emphasis on his demand for 
conversion. Augustine, or Paul, or Wesley could not have 
been clearer on this point than was he. On this prime neces- 
sity all the saints have based their supreme claim for the 
new life in Jesus Christ. ‘‘Wherefore if any man is in 
Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; 
behold, they are become new.” 

2. He was a man of prodigious personal force. A chief 
factor of Salvation Army achievement was the extraordina- 
ry personality of its founder and chief. Through his per- 
sonal force it was brought into being, and by his strong 
hand it was guided while he lived, and from his grave he 
exerts a strong force upon it still. He impressed himself 
upon the Army, and he impressed himself upon the un- 
shepherded multitudes, and he impressed himself upon the 
public at large. He was not a man to awaken a neutral 
attitude toward himself or his movement. Till this day, 
all who trouble themselves to think or act about the matter 
have rather a positive opinion, favorable or unfavorable, 
of William Booth and the Salvation Army. It was the 
heart of the man, in the moral and not in the physical 
sense, his invincible faith and indomitable courage, that 
kept him going so long past sixty; for he had but a frail 
body, and scarcely nourished that, his meals for a number 
of years consisting of a slice or two of toast, or bread and 
butter, or rice pudding and a roasted apple. But though 
so frailly housed while here, his deeds outlast his time; 
and we may accept the estimate freely expressed by an 


340 PRINCES .OF ‘THE (CHRISTIAN 


intimate admirer, that “to the end of time the spirit of 
William Booth will be a part of our religious progress.”’ 

3. The natural forcefulness of his personality was greatly 
heightened by the intensity and singleness of his religious 
consecration. However conspicuous or inconspicuous his 
place finally may be in the world’s hall of fame, he will sit 
forever in the company of the saints, he will be numbered 
among the apostles of the Lamb. An eminent American 
evangelist, being once in London when General Booth 
was about to leave for the Continent, hastened to the Salva- 
tion Army headquarters, having been told that he might 
meet the General if he were there promptly at the ap- 
pointed time. Very tender and very beautiful was the 
incident there. He ventured to ask the secret of this old 
man’s success all the way through. 

He hesitated a second, and I saw the tears come into his eyes and steal 
down his cheeks. And then he said: ‘‘I will tell you the secret. God has 
had all there was of me. There have been men with greater brains than 
I, men with greater opportunities; but from the day I got the poor of Lon- 
don on my heart, and a vision of what Jesus Christ could do with the poor 
of London, I made up my mind, that God would have all of William 
Booth there was. And if there is anything of power in the Salvation 


Army to-day, it is because God has had all the adoration of my heart, 
all the power of my will, and all the influence of my life. 


Turning then upon his visitor, he asked: ‘‘When do you 
go?’’ “In five minutes,’ was the answer. ‘Then let us 
pray.’’ And this was the way they prayed: 


I dropped on my knees with General Booth by my side and prayed a 
stammering and stuttering prayer. Then he talked with God about the 
outcasts of London, the poor of New York, the lost of China, the great 
world lying in wickedness; and then he opened his eyes as if he were look- 
ing into the very face of Jesus, and with sobs he prayed God’s blessing 
upon every mission worker, every evangelist, every minister, every Chris- 
tian. With his eyes still overflowing with tears, he bade me good-by 
and started away, past eighty years of age, to preach on the Continent. 


Think you, was this a consecrated man? 








Pinot beenuN ie PASTORAIE 341 


4. There was in him a surpassing human tenderness and 
compassion. He was deeply touched with the feeling of 
human infirmity and degradation. The “enthusiasm of 
humanity”’ infused his spirit and his conscience. All the 
sorrows of the world knocked at his door. He realized the 
sorrows of others in a surpassing degree: in their affliction 
he was afflicted; in their hunger he was hungered; in their 
poverty he was distressed; with their diseases he was strick- 
en; by their stripes he was beaten and tormented; in their 
wanderings his own great spirit wandered through the 
earth. ‘“‘He was afflicted by the sins of the whole world. 
They hurt him, tore him, wounded him, and broke his 
heart.”’” ‘‘The sad, wretched women; the little, trembling, 
frightened children’’—their cry was always in his ears. 
The drunkard’s children, the harlot’s babe—these were 
his special care. 

The root idea of rescue was worked into the whole Salva- 
tion Army system. Its work constituted the religious 
rescue department of the Church of the Living God. Booth 
had his great idea of conversion, and he carried it out into 
the highways and hedges and down into the alleys and 
slums of towns and great cities where the woeful human 
tides swept by. Human derelicts, borne hither and thither 
by the storms of their own passion and preyed upon by 
the injustice and wrought upon by the oppression of their 
supposed superiors, he regarded as his peculiar charge. 
Those whom other agencies passed by were left for him, 
and he was a great gleaner in the fields where grace is sown 
for the salvation of men. He was the world’s greatest mis- 
sionary evangelist of his day, and the poor are still reaping 
harvests of good where his diligent hands sowed the fields 
of their need, morning, noon, and night. Through tem- 
perament, time, and circumstance, he was obviously set 
apart to his task. Through the great compassion of his 


342 PRINCES” OF “THE PUT Riss 


soul he was providentially summoned to his great endeavor. 
He was brought in in a way strangely similar to that of 
the apostles of the earlier Christian times whom Jesus 
taught to pray the night before they were chosen: “‘ Pray 
ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth 
laborers into his harvest.’’ Surely the Lord of the harvest 
sent this laborer into the fields. 

5. Another chief factor in Salvation Army achievement 
has, of course, been found in compact and effective organi- 
zation. William Booth organized the Army and gave it 
its original cast. He was its chief inspiration throughout 
his life. But the business administrator of the movement 
doubtless has been his son and successor, Bramwell Booth. 
However this may be, organization has been a factor which 
the movement could not at all have dispensed with. To 
the ends of this organization the whole Booth family was 
devoted. Through the consecrated action of the head of 
this house it became a sort of “Headquarters Staff of the 
Salvation Army,’ and Catherine Mumford Booth, Bram- 
well Booth, Emma Booth, and Evangeline Booth can never 
be forgotten while the General himself is remembered. 

By the common consent of mankind William Booth 
and John Wesley are put in a class together. It was not 
for naught that William Booth spent his early days among 
the Methodists, and nowhere outside the Army is he more 
honored to-day than among the followers of Wesley. 
‘Plutarch would have put William Booth and John Wesley 
together in his ‘Parallel Lives,’’”’ said The Christian World 
of London, when the second member of the great duumvi- 
rate died. And Dr. James M. Buckley, in an editorial 
tribute at the time, said: “The Salvation Army is what 
William Booth made it, and he succeeded in forming it 
into the happiest blend of spiritual fervor and social en- 
thusiasm known to the world since the days of Wesley.” 





Se eee ai 








XIV 


ALEXANDER WHYTE 
(1836-1921) 


SCOTLAND has been a nursery of preachers. It is a land 
where valor is native and where religion has been accepted 
as supernatural. A great preacher is rarely produced on 
the pabulum of a superficial religious belief, and even so 
he is the exception which proves that the rule lies on the 
contrary part. A land less devout than Scotland would 
have produced fewer preachers, and they of a smaller cali- 
ber. There was a time, according to Dr. David Smith, 
when ‘‘the summit of desire”’ in well-nigh every Christian 
and piously ordered Scottish home was that there might 
be a son of the house, preferably the eldest, to enter the 
Christian ministry. This goodly desire, without doubt, has 
been the mustard seed which has sprung up in many a 
broad-spreading and truly gospel ministry. 

The Scottish pulpit is a phrase which possesses a distinc- 
tion far above the measure of most lands of the size of 
Scotland. Dr. W. M. Taylor, of New York, himself a 
Scotchman loaned to America, took this for the title of a 
series of the Yale Lectures on Preaching delivered by him 
in the college year of 1885-86, the scope of the lectures 
covering the period from the Reformation to the date of 
their delivery. Even within these limits the list of preach- 
ers is an illustrious one. It begins with John Knox, who 
made Scotland Protestant and laid broad and deep the 
foundations of the preaching of his land. The list continues 
with Andrew Melville, in whom there is suffered no loss 
either of distinction or grace, the man who said to the 

(343) 


344 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


recalcitrant James: ‘‘Now I must tell you again, there are 
two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland; there is King 
James, the head of this Commonwealth, and there is Christ 
Jesus, the King of the Church, whose subject James the 
Sixth is, and of whose kingdom he is not a king, nor a lord, 
nor a head, but a member. . . . We will yield to you 
your place, and give you all due obedience, but again I 
say, you are not the head of the Church; you cannot give 
us that eternal life which we seek for even in this world, 
and you cannot deprive us of it. Permit us, then, freely to 
meet in the name of Christ and to attend to the interests 
of that Church of which you are the chief member.” It is 
men like Knox and Melville whose courage and manhood 
have won the freedom of the pulpit from overbearing kings 
and lords and have bequeathed it as the greatest natural 
heritage the pulpit has. 

The continuators of this great bequest in Scotland were 
men such as Alexander Henderson, Samuel Rutherford, 
David Dickson, John Livingstone, the saintly Archbishop 
Robert Leighton, Thomas Boston of Ettric, Dr. John 
Erskine, Andrew Thomson, who preceded Alexander 
Whyte in Edinburgh, Thomas Chalmers, too big to be 
called by any title, Dr. Thomas McCrie, the biographer of 
Knox, Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh, Dr. John Eadie, 
Norman Macleod, Robert Smith Candlish, and Thomas 
Guthrie, who went to take up his long service as a pastor 
in Edinburgh when Alexander Whyte was less than two 
years old. 

SHADOW AND STRUGGLE 


The outward course of Alexander Whyte’s life is sus- 
ceptible of a statement so brief as to seem almost bare. 
So that we shall be the less concerned with this, but more 
with the inward strivings in which his history really con- 
sists. 





PULPIT AND PASTORATE 345 

He was born on January 13, 1836, in Kirriemuir, in the 
Thrums District, afterwards made famous by Sir James 
Barrie through his books. ‘‘In God’s providence,” said 
Dr. Whyte later in life, “‘I was born in a poor rank of life.”’ 
Worse than this, if in spite of his own view of the case 
we may regard his poverty as having been in any sense bad, 
he was born under a dark shadow. His parents, John 
Whyte and Janet Thomson, were never married. His 
home, therefore, was only the shadowed home of his mother. 
A child’s intimacies with his father his childhood never 
knew. John Whyte would gladly have married the mother 
of his child, but she refused, seeming to feel that to do so 
would only be to add pretense to shame, and thus to in- 
tensify the grief her soul already poignantly felt. But she 
did not shrink from clear duty, her duty to her child. 
She labored at weaving, and then turned to the heavier 
toil of the harvest field, because it was more remunerative, 
if by any means she might properly provide for the child 
whose infant brow she had stained with her own sin. 
But the finest things she wrought were not with her hands, 
but with her soul, by God’s help. She recovered the purity 
of her conscience and restored the moral balance of her life, 
acquiring strength of purpose and maturity of character 
through suffering, and brought up her child in the fear of 
God. She dared the public gaze, and defied the Pharisaic 
scorn of those not as good as she, for always in such cir- 
cumstances there are such people, and carried her child 
to the Sunday school and to church, so that besides her own 
influence there wrought graciously upon his expanding life 
the influence of both Sunday school teacher and pastor. 
Next to her own influence that of David White, pastor of 
the neighboring Church of Airlie, was the best thing the 
child had in his upbringing. 

John Whyte went away to America, and won an honor- 


346 PRINCES"0OF “THE GHRIST ia 


able name there, and obtained a moderate degree of tem- 
poral prosperity. He enlisted for service in the Civil War 
on the Union side, and suffered some of the worst hard- 
ships of prison life. He married and had a lovely daughter, 
who, when her mother had been some time dead, went to 
Scotland on the urgent invitation of her half-brother, who 
was truly devoted to her, and made her home with him 
until she herself was happily married. One of her daughters 
became in turn the wife of a devoted friend of Alexander 
Whyte himself. Such are the triumphs of grace in human 
life and character. 

Little Alec Whyte’s first employment beyond the im- 
mediate direction of his mother was as a keeper of cattle, 
at which he would serve for a brief space in the summer 
season, as occasion offered. He received little education 
at this time of his life. ‘‘I did not get much education,” 
said he, ‘‘any more than John Bunyan, in my young 
days.’’ He was hampered also by a defect of verbal mem- 
ory which attended him all through life. He did, however, 
develop early in life a passionate devotion to reading, 
which increased as his powers matured till it became one 
of the consuming ardors of his soul. 

He worked for a while at weaving, but in course of time 
was apprenticed to a shoemaker. But his soul was not 
pledged where his body was bound. He would read while 
at his task, by one means or another, resorting even to 
the expedient of employing a younger lad, at the cost of 
a few of his hard-earned pennies, to read aloud to him. 
He formed an agreement with several other youths to meet 
together out of work hours three times a week for study. — 
Or he would repair to the house of some neighboring — 
weaver who loved and kept a few books, and he would sit 
and read while the weaver wrought at his loom. ‘‘ During 
these arduous years,” says Dr. G. F. Barbour, his accredited 





PULCPITVAND “PASTORATE 347 


biographer, ‘‘Whyte was not only laying up stores of in- 
formation or growing in knowledge of the world of books. 
He was not less steadily advancing, through unremitting 
effort and discipline of will, toward that power of ceaseless, 
concentrated work, and that jealous watchfulness over 
the passing moments which were among the greatest 
sources of his strength in later life.” 

The shadow and the struggle of these early years thus 
advanced him toward two at least of the great estates of 
his life—his passion for learning, and his thirst for right- 
eousness. ‘‘The summons to work, and the summons to 
purity’’—these came to constitute a pervading note of 
his preaching. That students and young preachers should 
work “‘was his theme morning, noon, and night, and the 
prospect of an inquisition about what one had been read- 
ing and how many hours one had been studying acted as 
a second conscience to keep up the level of diligence’’ 
among these same young preachers. 

Already the boy at the shoemaker’s bench was begin- 
ning to hear his summons to higher service. His mother 
had begun to have some anxiety about his fidelity to his 
engagement as an apprentice, and he long remembered 
how earnestly he was saying to her one afternoon, ‘‘ Don’t 
cry, mother; don’t be afraid, for I will go and serve out 
my time; but, mind you, I am going to be a minister.” 


COLLEGE AND SEMINARY 


By dint of hard work, and close application, and the most 
diligent use of his time, and the persistence of his struggle 
to obtain books, and three years of experience in teaching 
at Airlie, and the intelligent and devoted guidance of David 
White, who was his pastor there, and some welcome finan- 
cial assistance from his father, he came at last to King’s 
College, Aberdeen, and entered as a student. But priva- 


348 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


tions and a necessary severity of self-discipline hardly 
grew less. Sir James Barrie afterwards said that “there 
were among Dr. Whyte’s class-fellows men who endured 
greater hardships to get an education than a traveler suf- 
fers in Central Africa.’’ Whyte himself hardly suffered 
to this extent, but he was not yet exempt from the need to 
endure. He relieved his situation in one way and increased 
the tension of it in another way by teaching evening classes 
at an Aberdeen factory. Nor did he yet completely ab- 
solve himself from financial strain; for it is related that he 
and a classmate who were able to own only one of a certain 
textbook between them took alternate turns at sleep and 
at study for the entire night before an important examina- 
tion. On his first appearance in Aberdeen, according to 
his own testimony, he had passed up King Street to the 
college bearing his entire outfit of earthly possessions in 
his portmanteau. 

The great revival which culminated i in 1859, and which 
exerted such a wide and lasting influence in the north of 
Scotland, was at this time in progress. It came without 
any particular human design, and ere it had passed multi- 
tudes, both inside and outside the Churches, had been 
mightily moved toward God and a more decisive religious 
life. It was largely a layman’s movement and was char- 
acterized by much greater freedom in religious worship 
and action than the Presbyterian Churches had been ac- 
customed to. Whyte was drawn actively into the work 
of the revival and received large and lasting benefit from 
it. 

His work in college brought him intellectual difficulties 
as well as those which were without; but for all that he 
lacked in ability in the languages and mathematics he 
finished his course in the prescribed four years and came 
off with honors in philosophy. He said that at any rate 








FUCRIT: AND PASTORATE 349 


college had taught him to think; and he had formed that 
first acquaintance with Goodwin and with Bishop Butler 
which was to ripen into a passion. And he had otherwise 
greatly extended the range of his reading. There was a 
debating society, too, from which he derived good both 
calculable and incalculable. 

Toward the end of his time at Aberdeen his roommate 
burst in upon him toiling at his midnight studies and an- 
nounced that he had just seen a notice in the Witness that 
a presentation bursary had been established at New Col- 
lege, Edinburgh, for the benefit of a student whose name 
should be Whyte, and that the preference was to be given 
to one using the “‘y’’ in hisname. This benefit he obtained. 
A year later, as he himself relates, when he was again at 
his books, now in his little garret in Scotland Street, 
Edinburgh, his old landlady knocked at his door and told 
him that Dr. Moody Stuart, distinguished pastor of one 
of the Edinburgh Churches, was waiting to see him. He 
said if the angel Gabriel had been announced he could 
not have been more surprised. But it proved to be an an- 
gel’s visit anyway, as he was happily to learn, for he was 
to become an assistant to Dr. Stuart. 

His work in theology occupied him for four winters, 
the sessions being shortened in order to afford the students 
opportunity for other employment for a considerable part 
of the year. Dr. Robert Candlish was principal of the 
College, and Robert Rainy, A. B. Davidson, and Dr. 
John Duncan were on the faculty. But for all this array 
of scholarly names Whyte said he learned more from his 
fellow students than he did from professors. Marcus 
Dods he also found in Edinburgh waiting to find a perma- 
nent settlement as pastor. Altogether his seminary days 
passed most profitably. 


350 PRINCES: OF “THE CURIS nia 


EARLY PREACHING AND FIRST PASTORATE 


He had preached his first sermon in a village school- 
house when he was a college student. A good deal of ir- 
regular preaching he had done in the revival of 1859. He 
had also served a brief time as regular preacher for a Con- 
gregational Church in Aberdeen. Then he was asked to 
take temporarily an important Free Church mission sta~- 
tion where he had unrestrained contact with many of his 
own former people of ‘‘a poor rank in life.’ The revival 
was still in progress and his evangelistic activities assumed 
rather a wide range. 

In 1866 he became assistant pastor at Free St. John’s 
Church, Glasgow, where he remained for four years. A 
part of this time he served not as assistant, but as colleague 
to the pastor. This was also the year in which he finished 
his college work, for the institution at which he took his 
theology was called, as we have seen, not a seminary, 
but a college. He was now thirty years old, but was only 
eighteen years from a cobbler’s bench. He had marked 
another stone in his intellectual pilgrimage by becoming 
a regular reader of the Spectator under Richard Holt Hut- 
ton’s literary editorship. And who is the young preacher 
who ever got his hands on the essays of Richard Holt 
Hutton who could ever pay the debt he thereby con- 
tracted? 


FREE ST. GEORGE’S, EDINBURGH - 
The Scottish Church which had been established under 


the Presbyterian form of government at the time of the 
union between England and Scotland in 1707 was disrupted 
in 1843 and the Free Church was formed. The Disruption 
proceeded mainly on the ground of the patronage act which 
came into force under Queen Anne. In 1814 St. George’s 
Church in Edinburgh had been established with Dr. 





meULPIT AND ‘PASTORATE Stow 


Andrew Thomson as its first pastor. At the time of the 
Disruption Dr. Robert Smith Candlish was its pastor. 
The Church was hopelessly divided by the prevailing dis- 
turbance, and Dr. Candlish, followed by a large number of 
his people, went out and founded Free St. George’s. It 
was to this Church that Alexander Whyte came in 1870 
as colleague to Dr. Candlish. His active service there 
was to continue for forty-seven years; and for more than 
twenty-two years of this time he was to be the Church’s 
sole minister. 

Dr. Candlish, who also served as principal of New Col- 
lege, died in the autumn of 1873, leaving the Church to the 
sole care of his younger colleague. As he lay in calm an- 
ticipation of his last moments he had called to his bedside 
the two men on whom his twofold mantle must fall, and, 
speaking more particularly to Dr. Rainy, he had said: 
‘‘T leave the congregation to Whyte and I leave New Col- 
lege and the Assembly to you.’ There could not be a 
more solemn will and testament, and right faithfully did 
the two men receive it. And neither could there be a more 
magnanimous mentor and friend than Candlish had been 
to Whyte; and that prophetic deathbed scene lingered as 
a mountain-top memory in the mind of the youngest of 
the three men who had been gathered within its unearthly 
glories. Alexander Whyte had in his turn his own col- 
leagues (Hugh Black for ten years, and John Kelman for 
almost as great a length of time) and his own assistants 
as well—among them being two young Americans, during 
the Great War, who were in Edinburgh for theological 
work—and he could only strive to be to them what Dr. 
Candlish had been to him. And in genuine nobleness did 
‘he succeed. In his memorial address at Dr. Whyte’s 
death Dr. Kelman said: ‘‘We would have laid down our 
lives for him, Hugh Black and I. The only difference we 





352 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN®@ 


ever had with him was that by all sorts of subtle ways he q 
thrust us forward into any prominent or desirable position _ 
which he himself was expected to take, and we had to 
watch him for this and circumvent his too great generosi- 
ty.’’ Soon after he assumed the sole pastorate of Free St. 
George’s Moody and Sankey came to Edinburgh, and 
there ensued the revival of 1874, in which Dr. Whyte en- 
thusiastically shared. 

There entered next into the field of his activities and 
interest the famous Robertson Smith case with all its sharp- 
ly drawn theological issues and attendant clash of opinion; 
and the heat of a trial for heresy. He boldly declared his 
own opinion, but he asserted it, not on the ground that he 
agreed with the position of the accused, but that he be- . 
lieved that the Church of Christ should be “‘the most 
catholic minded, the most hopeful, the most courageous, 
the most generous of all bodies of men on the earth, sure 
that every movement of the human mind is ordered and 
overruled for her ultimate establishment, extension, and 
enriching.” 

In 1881 he was married to Jane Elizabeth Barbour, 
and a happy wife, and then children, came to bless his 
heart and his home. There was in that home, says Dr. 
James Stalker, “such an atmosphere of grace and refine- 
ment as made the manse of St. George’s a center of traffic 
for all the culture of the time.” 

In the spring of 1882 he received the honorary degree of 
Doctor of Divinity from the University of Edinburgh and 
henceforward bore what became him as his most familiar 
title, ‘Dr. Whyte of Free St. George’s.’”’ Later he received 
the Doctor of Laws degree from his Alma Mater. The 
highest honor within the gift of his Church came to Dr. 
Whyte when he was called in 1909 to the principalship 
of New College. This position he held for nearly nine years, 





PULPIT AND PASTORATE 393 


but in conjunction with the pastorate of his Church. It 
gave him an unprecedented opportunity to translate into 
forms of practical helpfulness his inexhaustible interest 
in young preachers. 

The great World Missionary Conference came to Edin- 
burgh in 1910, and Dr. Whyte offered the opening prayer 
of the occasion. He mentioned by name many of them 
and thanked God in his prayer for all the saints of all the 
Churches of all the ages, as was suitable to the personnel 
and objects of the conference. It was in speaking of this 
prayer that an eminent woman of the Anglican Church 
said that it had never occurred to her before to thank God 
for John Knox. The unaffected devotion of his heart and 
the broad and genuine catholicity of his mind as evoked in 
the prayer impressed every thoughtful mind in the great 
assembly. 

The Chapman-Alexander meetings came early in 1914, 
and the presence of Dr. Whyte, who was in constant at- 
tendance, notwithstanding the many responsibilities he 
had otherwise, served to link these meetings with those 
of Moody and Sankey which had passed forty years before. 

Then came the Great War as if a bolt of hell had been 
discharged out of the clear blue. For so it came, though 
everybody can now see that it had long been coming. Dr. 
Whyte received all its sorrows into his heart and all its 
wounds in his soul. Such a man as he could not be alive 
and do otherwise. Four of his children went into one form 
or anotner of the service. On the morning of September 
25, 1915, while at the head of his battalion which he led 
in the battle of Loos, his son, brave young Robert Whyte, 
met instant death. Earlier in the same advance, and only 
a few hundred yards from where young Whyte fell, his 


friend, George Smith, Sir George Adam Smith’s eldest son, 
29 


354 PRINCES OF “THE CHRIST EAN 


had had a similar swift and fatal encounter with death. 
Such is the inevitable cost of war. 

And so the course of his historic ministry ran on at Free 
St. George’s, where for so long a time he kept the most 
distinguished pulpit of his Church and served its largest 
and most influential congregation. 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 


The main lines of ministerial activity are prescribed by 
custom and the requirements of the case. Any minister 
may take down his manual and see how it is all to be done. 
The singularity of Alexander Whyte was that he did not do 
the things that ought to be done in the prescribed way. 
He did not do them according to manual—but according 
to Alexander Whyte. And therein he is a lesson for all 
ministers who aspire to be and to do their best. 

1. He was first of all a preacher. Others might elect to 
be just ministers; but the burden of being a preacher lay 
as a first charge upon his soul. If we are to be ministers 
only and not preachers, then why should we not dispense 
with prophets and have only priests? Only it will be priests 
in the full sacerdotal sense that we shall soon have, and not 
priests according to the sound scriptural idea of the priest- 
hood of believers. 

(1) First of all, then, Alexander Whyte wrought at the 
business of being a preacher. He literally yoked himself 
to that task. He studied toilsomely. He studied until he 
knew that he had studied. Many preachers never do this. 
But he did. His acute biographer says that there might 
well be applied to him his own frequently quoted remark 
of Lord Morley about Gladstone that “‘his industry was 
more than half his genius.”’ His patiently, and painfully, 
and toilfully accumulated notes diligently and carefully 
made as he read and studied; his interleaved Bible, which 








; PULPIT AND PASTORATE M385 


was one of his priceless possessions, marked beyond the 
_ decipherment of anybody but himself—these were veritable 
and all but inexhaustible treasuries of homiletical ma- 
terial. Some men say they grow their sermons. And this 
is very well. Only sermons are like plants: they do not 
- grow without some process of cultivation. Sermons grown 
indolently are worth about as much as plants growing 

wild. 
Many will think Dr. Whyte was too much bound to 
method when he confined himself so rigidly to his manu- 
script in his preaching at St. George’s as rarely to depart 
from it, though elsewhere he was freer. But none who 
knows the facts of the case will ever doubt that he had a 
method which exacted severe toil of him. He writes to 
a friend on Friday afternoon that he is resolved to tear up 
the second draft of his sermon for the following Sunday, 
and to write a third. ‘‘This,’ he continues, ‘will nail me 
down to my desk all day to-morrow.”’ When he was in 
his seventieth year he said to one of his children whom he 
had undertaken to guide in some literary work: ‘‘I wrote 
my last forenoon sermon three times over.”’ 

He was systematic to the point of severity. Dr. Bar- 
bour says that for more than forty years his weekly round 
of work scarcely varied by an hour. What with this kind 
of system, and application, and diligence, and prayer, and 
severity with himself might not many another minister 
accomplish? ‘Prayer and work,’’ said he; ‘‘all great and 
true and eminently successful ministers from Paul’s day 
downward bear the same testimony: prayer and work.”’ 
He had no patience with preachers who said they had no 
time for study. In an address to preachers from the mod- 
_erator’s chair of the Free Church Assembly when he oc- 
cupied that office, he said: ‘‘We cannot look seriously in 
one another’s faces and say it is want of time. It is want 


356 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


of intention. It is want of determination. It is want of 
method. It is want of motive. It is want of conscience. 
It is want of heart. It is want of anything and everything 
but time.”’ 

His homiletical habit was so strong upon him that it 
persisted in extreme old age when he was out of the pas- 
torate and did not need sermons. Ever and anon—and 
perhaps it is more frequently ever than anon—there appears 
a preacher who says he cannot make sermons. And he 
has no difficulty in finding people who agree with him. 
But here was a preacher who got so in the habit of making 
sermons that he could never quit. Speaking once after his 


retirement from the pastorate to preachers at the Edin- © 


burgh Presbytery, he said: “‘I select the most home-coming 
of these texts, and I write upon it every forenoon, even 
though I have nowadays no pulpit use for what I write; 
no pulpit use, only my own paramount and pressing use.” 

(2) The emphasis upon sin in Dr. Whyte’s preaching 
drew marked attention. His lifelong aim was to be a 
preacher of righteousness, and the preacher of righteous- 
ness cannot escape rigorous dealing with sin. The truest 
friend of sinners is the deepest hater of sin. When he was 
resigning his pastorate at St. George’s to be taken over by 
Dr. Kelman the latter said of him: ‘‘He has been the most 
scathing prophet of sin in our generation and the tenderest 
friend of sinners.” 

His own consciousness of sin gave poignancy to his 
preaching. One Sabbath morning at an Edinburgh mis- 
sion where a free breakfast was served to the poor, the au- 
dience had just sung Cowper’s familiar hymn, ‘‘There is 
a fountain filled with blood,’’ when Dr. Whyte arose and 
with profound conviction said, reverting to the stanza on 
the dying thief: “My name is Alexander Whyte, and I 
can put my name in that verse alongside the name of the 





BV ro rieAND PASTORATE 357 


dying thief, and of William Cowper. Can you put your 
name there?’’ Again addressing an audience of his familiar 
poor he solemnly said to them that he had found out the 
name of the wickedest man in Edinburgh. Then bending 
forward over his desk he whispered: ‘“‘His name is Alex- 
ander Whyte.”’ In these unusual declarations of a sense of 
personal sin and in his solemn counsel to ‘‘Forefancy your 
deathbed,’’ as he expressed it, he was not always under- 
stood; as indeed he will not be until this day by a certain 
self-sufficient type of mind. Mr. W. E. Henley, editor of 
the National Observer, once took him rather severely to 
task, and at considerable length, for his morbid ‘‘coquetting 
with death.”’ ‘‘No healthy man believes he is going to die,”’ 
and so on. But here was one of the deepest secrets of the 
purity of Dr. Whyte’s character, and of the power of his 
preaching. Mr. Henley and his “bloody but unbowed”’ 
type, utter strangers to the deeper evangelical experiences 
and convictions, could no more understand Alexander 
Whyte denouncing himself as the chief of sinners than they 
could understand Paul doing the same. They do not under- 
stand Paul because they have little, if anything, to do with 
Paul’s gospel. But here was a man who did understand 
both Paul and his gospel; and there was a sense in which he 
uttered a profound truth when he said he was the wicked- 
est man in Edinburgh. Dr. Dinsdale T. Young well 
understood him when he said that ‘“‘he was one of the great 
evangelical penitents of the modern Church.” But there 
are people who can no more understand penitents than Mr. 
Cotter Morison could understand saints, desiring, as he 
did, to keep the saints but deny the grace they lived on. 
This gave him, too, a sure insight into the evangelical 
needs of others, and could but profoundly influence his 
preaching. He possessed a deep and searching knowledge 
of human character, and preached constantly for the re- 


358 PRINCES (OF THE CHRIST EAI 


building of that character in Christ. He became ‘“‘the 
most searching and powerful preacher of personality in 
the Church to which he belonged’’; and his own conscious- 
ness of sin in himself and his knowledge of sin in others 
were the very roots of this power: for so he learned to rely 
on God’s grace, and to teach others to do the same. Where 
his sense of sin abounded his sense of grace did much more 
abound. The saintly Dr. John Carment in his old age had 
a visit from Dr. Whyte on business. After their business 
had been completed, as Dr. Barbour relates, ‘‘the noble 
old lawyer thrust his papers and writing materials on one 
side, and, looking straight across the cleared desk at his 
visitor, said with great intensity: ‘Have ye any word for 
an old sinner?’’’ ‘Two great Christians faced each other 
across that desk because, first of all, two great sinners had 
faced God. 

Principal George Adam Smith, speaking from Dr. 
Whyte’s own pulpit three days after his death, said: ‘In 
Scottish preaching of the seventies, sin had either with 
the more evangelical preachers tended to become something 
abstract and formal, or with others was elegantly left alone. 
But Dr. Whyte faced it, and made us face it, as fact, ugly, 
fatal fact; made us feel its reality and hideousness, and 
follow its course to its wages in death. He did this not 
only by his rich use of the realism of poetry, and fiction, 
and biography, but as we could feel, through his experi- 
mental treatment of it, out of his own experience of its 
temptations and insidiousness, and of the warfare with 
it to which every honest man is conscript.” 

(3) Dr. Whyte possessed a brooding imagination; or a 
sustained power of meditation on great themes. He deep- 
ly and protractedly meditated the subjects and the char- 
acters of his discourse. For he preached much on Bible 
characters. The word ‘“‘character’’ is in the title of two- 





PULPITEAND PASTORATE 359 


thirds of the volumes of sermons that he published. He 
knew better how to brood than bustle, how to pray than to 
prate. Out of this mood there came to him a vivid and 
dramatic realization of the things he preached. Most of 
us are so obsessed by the material, so obtusely obsessed, 
that it becomes the real to us, and we do not see the things 
we ought to see. We do not sufficiently realize that ‘‘the 
seen is transient, the unseen eternal.’’ It was not so with 
him. He kept companionship constantly with the unseen; 
and carried ever in mind and heart the great themes of his 
pulpit and study. 

The times when he was most dramatic were the times 
when his imagination had done its best work. He had 
preached one evening in Edinburgh to a great men’s meet- 
ing on the terrible topic—it was sure to be terrible in his 
hands—"‘If I make my bed in hell.’”’ He had told his 
audience very plainly that if a man made his bed in hell 
he would have to lie upon it. He passed out into a bitter 
night, and as he came to a wind-swept corner of Princes 
Street a cloaked figure moved stealthily toward him out 
of the darkness, a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and 
the husky voice of a young man said, “‘O, sir, I have made 
my bed in hell’’; and into the dread yet friendly darkness 
the figure vanished as if it were a phantom. 

2. Dr. Whyte was not less a pastor because he sum- 
moned all the powers he possessed to the service of his 
pulpit. There can be no conflict between a properly ordered 
pulpit and a properly disposed pastorate. They who so 
conceive it have the fault in themselves. The defect or 
limitation is in the man and not in the system. Pulpit and 
pastorate truly conceived can only be mutually concordant 
and assistant to each other. At every point of his relation 
to his people Dr. Whyte was a shepherd and not a hireling. 
He was early resolved, as he says, to put his visiting in the 


360 PRINGES OFy DHE*GHRIsi tas 


front rank and beside his pulpit. His elders at St. George’s 
had said to him that they were never accustomed to much 
visiting. ‘‘Only appear in your own pulpit twice on the 
Sabbath: keep as much at home as possible,’”’ they said. 
‘‘Well, that was most kindly intended,” said he after ex- 
perience had been his teacher; ‘“‘but it was much more kind 
than wise. For I have lived to learn that no congregation 
will prosper, or, if other more consolidated and less exact- 
ing congregations, at any rate not this congregation, with- 
out constant pastoral attention. . . . Iam assure as 
I am of anything connected with a minister’s life, that a 
minister’s own soul will prosper largely in the measure that 
the souls of his people prosper through his pastoral work.” 

He kept a pastor’s visitation book, and out of his ex- 
perience with it counseled his brother ministers to read their 
own such books, and as name after name looked out of its 
pages and accused them of neglect, to learn in deep humilia- 
tion of soul to be more faithful, more diligent, more prayer- 
ful, more devoted. Many books and other furnishings were 
in his study. ‘‘But the chief objects in that study, after 
all, were the two deep armchairs that rested, one on each 
side, by the spacious fireplace. In one of them sat this 
great specialist in sin, in the other a long succession of men 
who believed that no other doctor could understand their 
case. Here broken hearts were mended, here despairing 
souls got their glimpse of a new hope, here the chief of 
sinners saw the prospect of his final triumph through grace. 
The stories told in that sacred chamber are buried now 
with the physician.”’ 

Late in life, when his own experience had given the acid 
test to the whole matter, he said: “‘ Nothing will make up 
for a bad pastorate. The blood of Christ itself does not 
speak peace in my conscience in respect of a bad pastorate. 








ePULPIT: AND PASTORATE 361 


Set every invitation and opportunity aside in the interest 
_ of a good conscience toward the homes of your people.”’ 

There was a certain inescapable remoteness about the 
man; nevertheless, he cultivated and acquired power of 
sympathy, and effected in his own character and conduct 
an unusual combination of conviction and charity. And 
where can all this better be done than in a true and diligent 
exercise of the Christian pastorate? 

3. Dr. Whyte’s best gifts, both as preacher and pastor, 
appeared to fine advantage in his work for young people. 
In an especial way this was true of his classes for their 
instruction in the Bible, and in theology, and at length in 
literature, and the main principles of philosophy. In none 
of these was the practical aim ever lost sight of, and first 
and last attendants upon his classes received invaluable 
instruction upon the conduct of the Christian life. The 
young men and the young women met in separate classes, 
the former on Sunday evening after the preaching service, 
and the latter on Wednesday afternoon. Many were 
gathered into these classes from outside his own congrega- 
tion, and not all of them were young people, the total 
number amounting oftentimes, particularly in the men’s 
class, to as many as five hundred. 

His preparation for his classes was as diligent and pains- 
taking as his own thoroughness of method required, the 
better part of his long vacations being given to it. He 
refused once at least to come to America for a series of 
lectures on the ground that he could not spare the time from 
the work of his classes. 

A series of “‘Handbooks for Bible Classes’’ for use by 
‘the Church at large, prepared under the joint editorship 
of himself and Dr. Marcus Dods, was one of the larger 
outcomes of this work for young people. Several volumes 


362 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


of this series, as Stalker’s ‘‘Life of Christ’? and ‘‘Life of 
Paul,” obtained a wide and permanent circulation. 


AUTHORS AND AUTHORSHIP 


1. Dr. Whyte had a mind too discriminative of values 
not to have his favorite authors, a mind too eager and 
responsive not to find the minds able to exert a formative 
influence upon his own life and character. He made a 
systematic study of the mystics, and his mind became 
saturated with much of the best that was in them. Wil- 
liam Law, Jacob Behmen, Teresa, Brother Lawrence, 
Dante, Thomas Boston, and Thomas Goodwin were among 
those who most deeply marked his mind and chastened 
his heart. The master influence of his life, however, was 
Goodwin. Newman and Butler drew him very strongly, 
too. 

‘‘Bunyan Characters’”’ was the title of three of his books. 
But even this scarcely expressed the full measure of his 
interest in the tinker himself, or in the characters the tinker 
created out of his fertile imagination. Hanna’s ‘Life of 
Chalmers”’ he thought he had read at least a dozen times; 
and Marshall’s classic on ‘‘Sanctification’’ not less often. 
Dr. James Denney’s “‘Christian Doctrine of Reconcilia- 
tion’? he is reading when he has reached an age at which 
the minds of most men have atrophied in the power of 
their attention to books. Within just a little while of his 
death he is recommending the new “‘Life of Andrew Mur- 
ray of South Africa,’”’ and the “Life of Spurgeon,”’ which 
was just off the press. 

2. He attained to authorship only through his pulpit 
and his work for his classes. He prepared and published 
no book through a direct literary intention or a direct aim 
at authorship. Such books as he produced were born of 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 363 


his passion for his pulpit and for all the work God had given 
him to do. 

For more than twenty years all his Sunday evening ser- 
mons appeared in the British Weekly, and were afterwards 
brought out in book form. ‘“‘The British Weekly has ren- 
dered no greater service to English religion,’ Dr. D. T. 
Young has written, “‘than it accomplished in introducing 
Dr. Whyte to the multitude of the English Churches 
nearly forty years ago.”’ 

The “Bible Characters’? were the fruit of his pulpit, 
and his books other than his sermons came, nearly all of 
them, from his classes. His great series of sermons on 
prayer, published under the title, ‘‘Lord, Teach Us to 
Pray,’ was delivered at the Sunday morning service at 
Free St. George’s. The editor of this volume, Rev. J. M. 
E.. Ross, successor to Sir William Robertson Nicoll as 
editor of the British Weekly, says of these sermons: ‘‘Ti- 
tanic, colossal; nothing like it in the whole literature of 
the subject.” 

A still later volume of sermons has the title, ‘‘ With 
Mercy and with Judgment.” Dr. Dinsdale T. Young, 
reviewing the volume, says: “All the great attributes of 
preaching are here—style, grasp of truth, knowledge of 
the heart of man, passionate love of the Redeemer, ardent 
longing for the salvation of the hearer. This and much 
more that built up the great renown of Alexander Whyte 
will be discovered to the awed and thankful reader as he 
passes through the entrancing paths of this volume of 
sermons.” 

The ‘‘Thirteen Appreciations’’ will appeal to many as 
nobler even than the sermons. Here are thirteen papers 
written in terms of ardent appreciation of Bishop Andrewes, 
Samuel Rutherford, Thomas Goodwin, Bishop Butler, 
Cardinal Newman, John Wesley, and others. Going to 


364 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


this volume for a quotation is like going to an opulent 
granary for a grain of wheat. One or two must suffice. 
“It was in my first year at the University,” says he, 
‘“‘that I first became acquainted with Thomas Goodwin. 
On opening the Witness newspaper one propitious morn- 
ing my eye fell on the announcement of a new edition of 
Thomas Goodwin’s works. I entered my name at once 
as a subscriber to the series, and not long after the first 
volume of Goodwin’s Works came into my hands. And 
I will here say with simple truth that his Works have never 
been out of my hands down to this day. In those far- 
off years I read my Goodwin every Sabbath morning and 
every Sabbath night. Goodwin was my every Sabbath 
day meat and my every Sabbath day drink. And during 
my succeeding years as a student, and as a young minister, 
I carried about a volume of Goodwin with me wherever I 
went. I read him in railway carriages and on steamboats. 
I read him at home and abroad. I read him on my holi- 
days among the Scottish Grampians and among the Swiss 
Alps. I carried his volumes about with me till they fell 
out of their original cloth binding, and till I got my book- 
binder to put them in his best morocco. I have read no 
other author so much and so often. And I continue to 
read him to this day, as if I had never read him before. 
Now, if I were to say such things as these about some of 
the Greek or Latin or English classics, you would receive 
it as a matter of course. But why should I not say the 
simple truth about the greatest pulpit master of Pauline 
exegesis and homiletic that has ever lived, and who has 
been far more to me than all those recognized classics taken 
together?’’ On Cardinal Newman he says: “‘All students 
of the English language give their days and nights to the 
Authorized Version of the Bible, to Shakespeare, to Hook- 
er, to Taylor, to Milton, to Bunyan, to Johnson, to Swift, 


= 


— 








PULPIT AND PASTORATE 365 


to Ruskin. But if they overlook Newman, they will make 
a great mistake and will miss both thinking and writing of 
the very first order. The strength, the richness, the pliabili- 
ty, the acuteness, the subtlety, the spiritualness, the beauty, 
the manifold resources of the English language are all 
brought out under Newman’s hand as under the hand of 
no other English author. ‘Athanasius is a great writer,’ 
says Newman, ‘simple in his diction, clear, unstudied, 
direct, vigorous, elastic, and, above all, characteristic.’ 
All of which I will repeat of Newman himself, and especial- 
ly this—he is, above all, characteristic. If the English 
language has an angel residing in it, and presiding over it, 
surely Newman is that angel. Or, at the least, the angel 
who has the guardianship of the English language com- 
mitted to him must surely have handed his own pen to 
Newman as often as that master has sat down to write 
English. No other writer in the English language has ever 
written it quite like Newman. Every preface of his, every 
title-page of his, every dedication and advertisement of 
his, every footnote, every parenthesis of his, has a stamp 
upon it that at once makes you say: ‘This is Newman!’”’ 

Dr. Whyte died in his sleep on Thursday morning, 
January 6, 1921, when he lacked but a week of having 
reached his eighty-fifth birthday, honorably loved and 
lamented by multitudes of the best Christian people of his 
own and of other lands. Thus passed his long and luminous 
life away. Right well had he “wrestled toward heaven 
’xainst storm and wind and tide” during the long season 
of his years. What long life of mortal man so shadowed 
at its beginning was ever more luminous at its end? 


XV 


JOHN HENRY JOWETT 
(1863-1923) 
Is It SUNSET ON THE PINNACLES OF PREACHING? 


‘“‘OnE after another,” says Mr. Richard Holt Hutton 
in a striking sentence introducing in the Spectator his essay 
on the death of Dean Church, ‘‘the great men of our Church 
disappear, and their places are not filled.’””’ Perhaps the 
statement startles. It contradicts that indolent and com- 
placent philosophy which says that the workmen die, but 
the Lord carries on his work. To be sure he does, but at 
the frequent hazard of employing unfit instruments, and 
in default of the striving of men for the higher fitness for 
his service. Bishop Lightfoot, Canon Liddon, and Dean 
Church had all died within a single year. Hutton goes on: 
‘‘Bishop Lightfoot was by far the most learned and saga- 
cious Englishman amongst the historical critics of the New 
Testament and of the apostolic Fathers; Canon Liddon 
was our most eloquent and stately preacher; Dean Church, 
our wisest and most accomplished man.’ How, indeed, 
could such a breach in the ranks of the ministry be healed? 

The Archbishop of Canterbury, in his foreword to Por- 
ritt’s ‘“‘Life of Jowett,” all but echoes this observation of 
Hutton’s: ‘‘ Preachers belonging to the front rank are rare 
in the England of to-day; rarer, I am afraid, than they used 
to be. Of that small number Dr. Jowett was preéminently 
one.’ Neither Dr. Davison nor Mr. Hutton has any dis- 
position to discount other preachers of distinction. Jowett 
was not the last of the line of noble and illustrious preach- 
ers in the English pulpit. Still it may fairly be said that 

(366) 


PRINCES OF THE PULPIT 367 


it is doubtful whether there is left another who can quite 
fill the place he filled or who possesses the particular 
preaching gifts with which he was so rarely endowed. 


A YORKSHIRE YOUTH 


Into their humble home in Halifax, in Yorkshire, on 
-August 25, 1863, Josiah and Hannah Jowett received a 
baby boy who was their fourth child and third son. They 
called the child John Henry, a name which, when coupled 
with his patronymic, the child was to make a sign of radiance 
and of hope to the ends of the English-speaking world. 
The house in which he was born was about a mile out 
of the center of the town. On an upper floor Josiah 
Jowett, who was a tailor and a draper, carried on his busi- 
ness. When John Henry was still a small boy the family 
removed to another place which provided ampler accom- 
modations for both the family which was still growing, 
and the business which was expanding. Otherwise the 
home was narrow and confined in its material appoint- 
ments, possessing not so much as a garden as an open out- 
let to the world. But this impediment applied only to the 
house. Within there was a home. Josiah Jowett, though 
an humble man, was in the solid qualities of his character 
a worthy father. The mother, however, rises on the hum- 
ble scene as the real foundation of the family, and as the 
tutor of the great preacher who was as yet concealed in 
the child. These things, in truth, are never wholly con- 
cealed from a true mother. They are all Marys who “‘keep 
all these things in their hearts.’’ They may be ever and 
anon rebuffed, but they will still say: ‘‘Whatsoever he 
saith unto you, doit.” “Jowett went through life singing 
the praises of his mother.’”’ She had the wisdom and tact- 
fulness with her children which come of a quiet but con- 
fident fellowship with God. She could teach because she 


368 PRINCES, OF sPHE «CHRIS Tia 


had first been taught. Her home and her chapel with her 
children for each and each for her children formed the 
central interests of her life. Her tears were more potent 
as reproof than any severity of punishment. Those tears 
one of her boys at least could never forget: ‘‘ Punishment 
might have been bearable, but I could have faced it. But 
tears, they vanquished me. A mother’s suffering for a 
son’s disloyalty to truth—that was something that made 
my act repulsive and at the same time revealed to me a 
heart of love and reconciliation and peace.’ 

Jowett’s first school was not able to constrain his will- 
ing attendance. But at his second he was happy and 
made rapid progress. When just under fourteen he be- 
came a pupil teacher at a boarding school where he had a 
worthy headmaster who aided his young assistant ‘‘in 
warring a way through the intellectual difficulties of youth.” 
He won a prize offered by a local committee of the school 
and selected a well-known one-volume Bible Commentary. 

The whole period of his childhood and youth passed 
without special adventure, though he does relate that he 
fought over the battles of the Russo-Turkish War as he 
could gather their main incidents from the newspapers, 
with tin soldiers set in array in a room in the house. He 
brought the war, and the tin soldiers, and some of the 
furniture in the room to an end by undertaking to fire a 
real cannon charged with real powder, and therefore capa- 
ble of larger results than he anticipated. 

The Mechanics’ Institute of the town opened to him at 
once its own doors and the way into the wider world of 
literature. Hours which he saved from his other work as 
a miser might do he spent there evening after evening 
poring over the books. An elderly gentleman, observing 
him to be thus occupied in the library one evening, passed 
near him and, touching him gently on the back, remarked: 





PULPIT AND PASTORATE 369 


“‘My boy, you must make your way to the university.” 
The act planted a desire and kindled a hope in the soul 
of the boy which were to bear incalculable fruitage in the 
time to come. His contiguity to the mechanics taught him 
another lesson, too. The sound of their iron clogs beating 
on the pavement as they passed in the early morning on 
the way to their work called him out of bed to his own tasks 
and fixed upon him a habit of matutinal toil from which 
he never departed as long as he could toil at all. 

Dr. Enoch Mellor, a man of real power and distinction, 
a fine natural orator, with an imposing presence and an 
impressive voice, who exercised an influence far beyond 
the borders of his immediate community, was Jowett’s 
boyhood pastor. Through some inadvertence they never 
met. Whether it was through the natural hesitation of a 
humble family to press themselves forward or some unin- 
tentional oversight on the part of the pastor, none could 
ever say. The influence of the pastor upon the boy, never- 
theless, was very marked. ‘“‘Square Church was to me,”’ 
he said, ‘‘a very fountain of life, and I owe to its spiritual 
training more than I can ever express.’” He remembered 
to have heard Dr. Mellor more than once lament that the 
Church had sent no young men into the Christian ministry. 
‘Thirty-five years after Dr. Mellor’s death,” says his 
biographer, ‘Jowett confided to a fellow voyager on an 
Atlantic liner that he had always modeled himself as a 
preacher upon Dr. Enoch Mellor.” 

Of the beneficent influences which bore upon his early 
life these three were longest to abide—his mother, Dr. 
Mellor, and two of his Sunday school teachers. One of 
his teachers in particular, Mr. J. W. T. Dewhirst, had 
made the Sabbath the sunniest day of the week, “a day 
looked for, longed for, loved.” 

A Young Men’s Society organized in the Square Church 

24 


370 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


for discussion and debates also exercised a highly beneficent 
-influence upon the formative stage of his life. He became 
one of the best speakers in the society and acquired a 
facility in extemporaneous speech which doubtless he would 
have been wiser to have retained. Through the exercises 
of the society he was led to religious address and even to 
the preaching of his first sermon when as yet he had not 
begun to turn toward the ministry as his life work. 

He was greatly interested in politics and heard all the 
notable political speakers who came within fifty miles of 
Halifax. In this he was greatly encouraged by his father. 
While serving as a pupil teacher he found a companion 
and traveled to London to be present at a great debate in 
Parliament in the course of which he had the good fortune 
to hear John Bright speaking at his best. These tastes of 
political debate but strengthened an inclination which he 
already had toward the law and a political career. Upon 
the approval and with the assistance of his father, he had 
entered into an arrangement to take service with a firm of 
Halifax solicitors as an articled clerk. Only the day be- 
fore the papers were to be signed he met his Sunday school 
teacher on the street and told him what he had planned to 
do. Mr. Dewhirst could ill conceal his disappointment, 
and remarked: ‘‘I had always hoped that you would go 
into the ministry.”’ Jowett was quite taken aback and im- 
mediately began seriously to reconsider his whole course 
for the future. He had been strongly drawn to the ministry, 
but had not felt that he was called. Later in his Yale 
Lectures on Preaching, which he delivered under an 
engagement which he had before he accepted the pastorate 
of the New York Church, he said: “‘It is of momentous 
importance how a man enters the ministry. . . . I 
hold with profound conviction that before a man selects 
the Christian ministry as his vocation he must have the 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 371 


assurance that the selection has been imperatively con- 
strained by the eternal God. . . . I would affirm my 
own conviction that in all genuine callings to the ministry 
there is a sense of the divine initiative, a solemn communi- 
cation of the divine will, a mysterious feeling of commis- 


-sion, which leaves a man no alternative, but which sets 


him in the road of this vocation bearing the ambassage of 
a servant and instrument of the eternal God. 

‘How shall they preach except they be sent?’ ‘The assurance 
of being sent is the vital part of our commission.’”’ He is 
but describing the way in which he himself was ‘‘set in 
the road of this vocation.’ The papers were left unsigned 
on a prospective lawyer’s desk, and he went into the minis- 
Lry:. 


THE MANIFOLD INTERESTS AND AGENCIES OF COLLEGE 
AND UNIVERSITY | 


Both parents cordially approved his decision to preach. 
Within a few weeks arrangements were completed for his 
entrance to Airedale College as a candidate for the Con- 
gregational ministry. The college was located at Brad- 
ford, only a few miles away from Halifax. Dr. A. M. Fair- 
bairn, already clothed with great distinction, was its prin- 
cipal. It was almost an education to come in sight of him. 
He had great capacity both in theology and philosophy, 
and was every way ‘‘a massive personality.’”’ He exercised 
a great influence upon Jowett, though the arrangement of 
the curriculum was such as not to bring the two into much 
direct contact. Dr. Archibald Duff, then one of the few 
other professors in the college, a man with a passion for 
Old Testament studies and for hard study in general, 
really influenced Jowett more than Dr. Fairbairn. Much 
of his incentive to hard and open-minded study he could 
distinctly trace to Dr, Duff, 


O12 PRINCES “OP THE: CHRIS (iti 


At the end of a year at Airedale Jowett had won a scholar- 
ship and went up to the University of Edinburgh. Edin- 
burgh is a great place to go to, in whatever capacity one 
may go; but perhaps it is more particularly advantageous 
to one who goes in the capacity of a student. There is a 
fine educative effect in the city itself, and its atmosphere 
is congenial to scholarly pursuits. And the Edinburgh 
pulpit was in itself at the time that Jowett went there a 
school of homiletics. ‘‘Edinburgh has always been a 
sermon taster’s paradise.’’ And Jowett had the taste. 
Some who were with him there in his student days recalled 
how he already bent all his interests and energies toward 
the pulpit. Perhaps the preachers in the Edinburgh pul- 
pits did not know what an apt pupil they had in their 
pews. Dr. Alexander Whyte was there at Free St. George’s, 
and ministered “in his majestic prime.” Dr. George 
Matheson, sightless yet seeing, was preaching comfort to 
others out of the travail of a radiantly lighted soul, while 
he felt that it was joy itself which sought him through 
pain. Dr. John Pulsford was at Albany Street Congrega- 
tional Chapel, and Dr. Landels was having great crowds 
at the Dublin Street Baptist Church. And if these did not 
suffice, there were yet others. Jowett gave the most of 
his time to Dr. Pulsford, but had the freedom of all the 
rest. Dr. Alexander Whyte, however, was and remained 
his favorite. Preaching, next to mothers and God’s grace, 
is the greatest agency for making preachers, and this 
eager Yorkshire youth was in the making. There is a 
beatitude for those who make much of preaching, especial- 
ly if they be themselves preachers, and this was done on 
a magnificent scale in Edinburgh. 

Jowett entered for a four-year course in philosophy and 
general arts. Dr. Henry Calderwood, who had then been 
long in the University and was to be there for a long time 


PULP EG AND PASTORATE SHS: 


afterwards until death terminated his labors, gave him his 
lifelong bent in philosophy. But Dr. David Masson, 
great master and teacher of the English classics and 
famous as a biographer of Milton, was his chief University 
distinction. Masson drank at the fountains himself and led 
others to them where they were taught to drink for them- 
selves. And this is the greatest distinction of any teacher 
next to the impact of his own character upon the character 
of those whom he teaches. Jowett still spent a good deal 
of time upon the newspapers, and still took a lively interest 
in political questions. 

Henry Drummond, intent upon his unique mission to 
college students, came to Edinburgh while Jowett was there 
and left perhaps no deeper mark upon any other than upon 
him. ‘‘Many and many a time,” said he, ‘‘ Drummond 
sent me home to my knees. . . . His influence re- 
mains in my life as a bright impulse to purity and truth. 

I thank God that I ever met and communed with 
Henry Drummond.” 

He obtained his Master of Arts, Edinburgh, in 1887, and 
returned to his old college for further work. Conditions 
there were in a process of change which temporarily oper- 
ated to the disadvantage of the students. But he had his 
own way of finding a way, and he and a fellow student 
studied the speeches of Bright and Burke, and talked of 
texts and sermons, and style and delivery, rather to the 
neglect of more regularly prescribed studies which were not 
offered upon attractive terms. 

Village pastorates were offered theological students in 
the long summer vacations, and Jowett served several of 
these. Cotherstone was one of them. Here he found the 
attendance terribly depleted, and so he went out into the 
streets with a hymn and a procession, halting here and there 
for a short talk to any standing by, until he had augmented 


374 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


his procession to the dimensions of his building, when he 
would return for his service. This course of procedure was 
repeated for both services of the day, and Sunday by Sun- 
day, throughout his pastorate. ‘‘He won a double victory: 
he created an organization and he learned how to do it.” 
Porritt says that ‘‘at this period he had a distinct gift for 
extempore speaking, but he declined to rely on it.” He 
seems to have had the idea that this kind of preaching did 
not cost enough to achieve anything. But Alexander 
McLaren found that this was the kind that did cost. 
Jowett spent six years in Airedale and Edinburgh together, 
and then two terms at Oxford, whither Dr. Fairbairn had 
gone to found Mansfield College. 


NEWCASTLE-ON- TYNE 


Visitors from Newcastle at Barnard Castle in the sum- 
mer of 1887 where Jowett was preaching heard him and 
reported their impressions to the St. James Congregational 
Church, which was then without a pastor. The result was 
that he was invited to fill the vacancy. He accepted, and 
remained for six years. His success was immediate. 
Crowds attended upon his preaching from the first. ‘‘ From 
that first Sunday at Newcastle in October, 1889, until his 
last Sunday at Westminster Chapel in December, 1922, 
he never knew what it was to preach save to crowds.”’ 
The membership of his Church steadily increased and all 
its activities prospered. It was especially noted that his 
influence upon young men was remarkable. 

When he had been six months at Newcastle he was mar- 
ried to Miss Winpenny, of Barnard Castle, the daughter 
of Mr. Francis Winpenny, who had been for fifty years a 
trusted office bearer in his Church. The marriage was a 
rarely prosperous and happy one. No children were the 





PUEPCE AND* PASTORATE 3/5 


issue of it, but the pair adopted a daughter, and this action 
also proved to be happy in its results. 

A preacher’s first pastorate, if it be of any length at all, 
must profoundly affect him, if indeed he is a man who is 
ever to be very greatly affected, whether favorably or other- 
wise. At Newcastle Jowett gave himself especially to the 
study of Isaiah, the Gospels, and the Epistles of Paul. On the 
pastoral side of his labors he devoted himself more particu- 
larly to the interests of children and young people, in whom 
he greatly delighted. But he did not fail to seek for re- 
sults in whatever direction an opportunity was offered to 
his ministry. He preached for a verdict. And he labored 
expecting results. His fame went forth throughout his 
own denomination and among the Free Churches general- 
ly. Though always in peril of a breakdown in his health, 
he began to assume some outside responsibilities. The 
sum of his Newcastle ministry he stated as follows on leav- 
ing there: ‘‘I have learned this lesson—that sin is mighty, 
but that God is mightier; I have learned that man is im- 
potent to redeem himself; I have learned that no man 
need be regarded as beyond redemption; I have learned 
that for the ruined life there is a power and a peace and a 
joy unspeakable; I have learned that the care and the 
misery of this Churcn are in the homes where Christ is 
absent; I have learned that the happiest and most beautiful 
homes connected with this congregation are the homes 
of the redeemed. These are the lessons of my ministry, 
and, standing upon the experience of these severe years of 
labor, I declare with a glad and a confident heart that Jesus 
has power and willingness to redeem everybody.” 


THE BUILDING POWER OF A GREAT PULPIT 


Dr. R. W. Dale, pastor of Carr’s Lane Congregational 
Church, Birmingham, England, died on March 13, 1895. 


376 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


The Church was the most conspicuous and influential with- 
in the limits of English Congregationalism. It was one of 
the great Churches of English Nonconformity. It oc- | 
cupied an unique position in the city of Birmingham, and 
had a distinguished history. An eminent American minis- 
ter declared it to be at the time the greatest Church in 
the world. Dr. Dale himself had given the Church its 
final lift to this great height. His ministry there had been 
cast along masterful lines. There was not an abler man 
among the Nonconformists. He was one of the great Eng- 
lish preachers of the nineteenth century; for the lines of 
his measurement comprehended the century, and have 
not shortened since. Who could ascend the Carr’s Lane 
pulpit and stand in Dale’s place there? The Church im- 
mediately turned to Jowett. It was the consensus of 
Opinion among the Congregationalists of the country, 
who had certain great denominational rights and interests 
there, that he was the man who ought to go there. On no 
other shoulders could the mantle of Dale so appropriately 
fall. If it did not already rest there, then the hands of 
no other man were more worthy to rescue it from the 
place where it had fallen and bear it back to the same 
pulpit 

There had been some doubt whether the Church could 
survive the passing of Dr. Dale without loss of prestige. 
Indeed, Dale himself in the days which lay nearer to his 
callow youth had predicted that the Church would go to 
pieces when John, Angell James, then its pastor, went to 
heaven. Under circumstances such as these, circumstances 
sufficiently impressive and important, yet mixed with 
misgiving, the call came to Jowett at Newcastle. It came 
with a significance which bade him put off his shoes from 
off his feet and turn aside to see what it all meant. It 
seemed to him that a door had been opened which no man 





PULPIT AND PASTORATE 344 


could shut, and he was steadfast to set his feet upon its 
threshold. He had not reached a decision without a con- 
flict, but once a decision had been reached there was no 
looking back. 

He went to Carr’s Lane, not to be another Dale, but to be 
himself and to do his own work. He “‘did not attempt to 
imitate Dale’s stride.’ The difference between the two 
men was well expressed in the saying that ‘‘ Dale’s congre- 
gation could pass an examination in the doctrines and 
Jowett’s congregation could pass an examination in the 
Scriptures.’’ This fine resolution that he would build with 
his own trowel, coupled with the prestige of the pulpit to 
which he had come, braced him to do his best and confirmed 
him in the exercise of those fine preaching gifts which, per- 
chance, had never come to their fullest flower under less 
propitious conditions. Preachers have, first of all, to make 
pulpits, but once an eminent pulpit is made it greatly as- 
sists in making preachers. This was what Carr’s Lane 
did for Jowett. He himself confessed to a friend that ‘‘he 
had been in peril of mere prettiness in preaching, but carry- 
ing on Dr. Dale’s work had proved his deliverance.”” He 
was wise enough to see that mere prettiness of speech could 
not sustain a great pulpit. It may temporarily catch a 
superficial crowd, but no Christian minister can build on 
that sand. It may please, but it cannot project great enter- 
prises. He who is going to labor at the task of removing 
mountains and building temples must clothe himself in 
sterner armor. All that Jowett found at Carr’s Lane helped 
him in the right course. The composition and organiza- 
tion of the Church greatly assisted him. He found a fine 
people in its membership and a body of high-minded and 
capable business men at the head of its affairs. He did not 
find himself bound to tasks from which the minister ought 
to be set free. His own fine gift in selecting men for par- 


378 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


ticular tasks enabled him to maintain the organization at 
the level of the standards already set. He had wondered 
when he came whether he should inherit ‘‘multitudinous 
rules or liberalizing principles,’ whether he should be ‘‘op- 
pressed with fixity of method or inspired with freedom of 
spirit.”” ‘‘I knew,” he said, ‘‘that the Church had been 
great for one hundred years, and I wondered whether its 
traditions would fit me like an easy and familiar garment 
or whether they would bind me like a coat of mail.” He 
found all things ordered for the better part. 

The very effort to meet the issue in a manly way, and 
any thought of any other would have been repugnant to 
him, put his powers on the stretch toward the highest limit 
of achievement. The legs of the runner grow strong and 
fleet in running; and so it is with even the higher faculties 
in men. Suffering, sorrow, temptation, responsibility well 
and wisely borne are great developers of strength and capac- 
ity. When Jowett felt laid on him the demand that he 
grow to the measure of the Carr’s Lane pulpit, he grew to 
. that measure. The demand, the opportunity, the responsi- 
- bility strained him, stretched him, built him, established 
him in the consciousness and in the exercise of all the finest 
and best that was in him. He had rich experience of the 
building power of a great pulpit, an experience which he 
might justly have coveted, and which any Christian preach- 
er might covet after him, and for which many had been 
thankful before him. We may well concur in the judgment 
that ‘‘as a preacher he reached his zenith at Carr’s Lane.” 
Sir William Robertson Nicoll on hearing him toward the 
end of his ministry there recorded the following impres- 
sions of his preaching: ‘‘Of the startling wealth and beauty 
of Dr. Jowett’s diction, the incisiveness of his contrasts, 
the overwhelming power of his appeals it is impossible for 
me to write adequately. Excellent and inspiring as are 








BUEELIIPAND PASTORATE 379 


his published sermons, one has to hear him in order to 
understand the greatness, and, I had almost said, the 
uniqueness, of his influence. In Dr. Jowett everything 
preaches. The voice preaches, and it is a voice of great 
range and compass, always sweet and clear through every 
variety of intonation. The eyes preach, for though Dr. 
Jowett apparently writes every word of his sermons, he 
is extraordinarily independent of his manuscript. The 
body preaches, for Dr. Jowett has many gestures, and not 
one ungraceful. But, above all, the heart preaches. I 
have heard many great sermons, but never one at any time 
which so completely seized and held from start to finish 
a great audience. . . . Above all preachers I have 
heard, Dr. Jowett has the power of appeal. That the ap- 
peal very deeply moved many who were listening was 
obvious, and no doubt it moved many who gave no sign. 
At times the tension of listening, the silence, and the eager- 
ness of the crowd were almost oppressive. It was all very 
wonderful and very uplifting.” 

His pulpit, however, did not by any means exhaust his 
interest in his Church. He was zealous to promote all its 
activities and to advance all its interests. He revised the 
hymnal, which had been long in use in the congregation, 
and brought it closer to the life and experience of the peo- 
ple. He denied the apathetic dictum that the week- 
night service is either useless or out of date and made good 
his denial in a city like Birmingham. He organized and 
conducted a Sunday school teachers’ preparation class 
and attracted the attendance of many from outside his 
own Church. The Digbeth Institute, a great social and 
religious center set up not far from Carr’s Lane in one of 
the most neglected districts of the city, remains until now 
as one of the conspicuous achievements of his Birmingham 
pastorate. ‘‘The prosperity and power of the Church grew 


380 PRINCES? OF >THE] CHRISPIAN 
and solidified with the years.’’ He was one of the recog- 
nized ‘‘intellectual and moral assets of the city.”’ 

Notwithstanding the limitations imposed upon him by 
his lack of physical strength, he rendered from Birming- 
ham a lavish service at large. He obtained the honor of 
preaching the stated sermon for the Congregational Union, 
of which he was a member, and was elected to the presi- 
dency of the Union at forty-two years of age, being at the 
time the youngest man ever so elected. He was elected to 
the presidency of the Free Church Council, and in that 
capacity rendered a service which was notable for the 
breadth of its conception and the efficiency of its execution. 
He was especially warm toward the Methodists, delighting 
in their fellowship and rejoicing to share their labors. In 
1910 he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from 
Edinburgh. 

In connection with all this fine achievement it is worthy 
of note that he never exploited his popularity. He made 
no ‘‘copy”’ for sensational newspapers. He was doing too 
great a work to come down to this. On the midnight that 
he arrived on the ‘“‘ Mauretania’”’ in New York to take up 
his ministry there the wharves were thronged with report- 
ers. They were surprised to find a spare-looking, modest, 
reticent man very ill adapted to headlines or front pages. 


THE MINISTRY OF A METROPOLITAN PULPIT 


Dr. Jowett visited America in 1909, primarily to speak 
at the Northfield Conferences, but en route he preached in 
Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, in Fifth Avenue Presby- 
terian Church, New York, and in one or two other churches. 
Almost immediately there were intimations that he would 
be called to the New York Church. A little later a definite 
call came. He declined. Then Dr. J. D. Jones, of Bourne- 





PULPIT AND’ PASTORATE 381 


mouth, England, was called. He also declined. Then Dr. 
Jowett was called again, and accepted. 

One of the stipulations of his acceptance was that his 
salary at the Fifth Avenue Church should not more than 
equal in purchasing value his salary at Carr’s Lane, so ear- 
nestly did he desire to keep his motives clear of all contami- 
nating complications. It was, of course, very difficult for 
him to leave Carr’s Lane. It was difficult to leave Birming- 
ham; and to leave England. He was transplanting his 
ministry, not only from Church to Church, but from one 
continent to another. And changes that have in them the 
sweep and breadth of continents are not easily made. 
But he was convinced again that a door was opened which 
no man could shut, and he came. 

His farewells and the regrets expressed at his departure 
included everybody from King George to the devoted peo- 
ple of his own pastorate. He declared on quitting Carr’s 
Lane after sixteen years of ministry there that ‘‘not a 
single word has ever fallen in the deacons’ vestry that I 
would wish recalled.”’ Dr. J. D. Jones had encouraged 
his coming to New York, giving it as his opinion that ‘the 
Fifth Avenue Church presented the greatest opportunity 
in the whole non-Episcopal Protestant world.”’ 

He began his ministry in New York on Sunday, April 2, 
1911. To the distinguished, and cultured, and rich con- 
gregation then and there assembled he preached on the 
compassion of Jesus for the multitude. He made no at- 
tempt to capitalize his coming, but entered seriously and 
as became a true Christian minister upon the arduous 
labors which were to prove to be so beneficent and far- 
reaching and truly evangelical in their effect. First of all, 
he had to learn to resist calls which, though in themselves 
of unquestioned importance, could but divide his energies 
and distract his aim, If he was going to do anything, he 


382 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


could not do everything. ‘“‘I am learning,’ he said in a 
letter to a friend in England, ‘“‘to resist almost every hour 
of the day the tremendous forces that would push me here 
and there. I do not know what time ministers here spend 
in their studies.’”’ Again he says: ‘One of the things I 


have had to do since I came is steadily to resist the enor- 


mous number of invitations to do all kinds of things in all 
parts of the United States and Canada. . . . I sim- 
ply will not doit. . . . Iam perfectly sure that what 
is needed here is concentration upon one’s own particular 
work.’’ Having thus laid out a straitened way for himself, 
he walked in it. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New 
York came to see him and told him the people were starv- 
ing ‘‘on merely social topics and essays on remote themes,”’ 
that he believed there was ‘‘a tremendous opening for 
evangelical preaching,’ and graciously assured him that 
he thought that he should find a place in the ministry of the 
great city. He expressed it as his own desire to see ‘‘the 
evidence that the Holy Spirit 1s at work in the Church, 
and that we have a witness in conversions and in the en- 
riched lives of the people.” 

He found the city even more cosmopolitan than he had 
anticipated. Entering a street car one morning, he was 
struck with amazement to find only one of his fellow pas- 
sengers reading a paper printed in English. At a news- 
stand he counted papers printed in eleven different lan- 
guages. ‘‘The cosmopolitanism of New York glared at 
him and profoundly affected all his subsequent thinking.” 
He sat in his vestry one day to see people who wished to 
join the Church. Among them there came “‘two Swiss, 
a German, a Scotchman, and several Americans.” At the © 
end of an afternoon service the last four men who spoke 
to him were ‘‘an American, a Spaniard, a Greek, and an 
Italian.” 











Peer oAND 7 PASTORATE 383 


Dr. James Palmer, his assistant in the Fifth Avenue 
- Church, has said that the effect of his preaching upon the 
great congregations gathered at every service in the church 
was beyond description. There they were, gathered, as 
he himself said, from the ends of the earth and composed 
of all the races of the world. When he came the morning 
attendance had dropped down to seven hundred or less. 
Soon the house was full, and in a little while signs had to 
be posted on the outside that no more could be admitted. 
The second service in the church is held at four o’clock 
in the afternoon. Attendance upon this quickly increased 
from four hundred or less to fifteen hundred. The mid- 
week service, which had been practically given up when he 
came, stood steadily at between four hundred and five 
hundred in attendance. To the second Sunday service 
large numbers of ministers came, since they were freed from 
attendance at their own churches at that hour. Dr. 
Palmer said he had seen four bishops of the Protestant Epis- 
copal Church at a single service, and a total of all ministers 
of as many as three hundred. ‘Priests of the Roman 
Catholic Church and rabbis of the Hebrew people were in . 
constant attendance.” All this while he was proceeding 
upon his own resolution that he would make his preaching 
and teaching to consist in “‘the immediate exposition of 
the Word of God,’’ and that his pulpit should be an evan- 
gelical landmark in the city. And so his ministry ran along 
these triumphant lines till the end came in New York. 


THE CALL OF THE HOMELAND 


He felt the tug of the World War desperately from the 
first. He wished to be in England. He felt ‘‘awfully out 
of it,’ he said. He regretted that America did not go in. 
But he kept his poise and his patience. He had laid his 


384 PRINCES OF THE: CHRISTEAS 


hand up against the true American heart and assured Eng- 
land of our sympathy with the Allied Cause. 

Two important calls to English Churches had already 
reached him in New York—to Free St. George’s in Edin- 
burgh, as successor to Dr. Whyte, and to the Richmond 
Hill Congregational Church, Bournemouth, England, as 
successor to Dr. J. D. Jones when it was anticipated that 
the latter would go elsewhere. He had also been asked to 
consider the pastorate of the City Temple, London, but 
a definite call did not materialize. Then came the call to 
Westminster Chapel, London, as successor to Dr. G. Camp- 
bell Morgan. He was pressed to stay in America. His 
Church employed every possible means to retain him. 
President Wilson, Secretary of State Lansing, and other 
eminent Americans joined in the appeal. Even the British 
Ambassador in Washington urged him to consider whether 
he ought not to remain here. But the call from the other 
side was too imperious; and the constraint of the home- 
land was in it. Both Mr. David Lloyd George, then 
Prime Minister, and Dr. J. H. Shakespeare, President of 
the Free Church Council, earnestly entreated him to re- 
turn to his stricken country in the hour of her crisis and 
calamity. He delayed. But at length he accepted. 

Remaining still for a short season in New York, he re- 
turned to England to take up his ministry at Westminster 
Congregational Chapel on May 19, 1918. Leaving New 
York, he said: “‘I return as the ambassador of your affec- 
tions.”’ Arriving in London he had an unprecedented 
welcome. At the House of Commons a dinner in his honor, 
attended by more than sixty members of Parliament, was 
given by Sir Joseph Compton-Rickett and Sir Albert 
Spicer of the Westminster Chapel. Mr. Lloyd George 
made the principal speech. ‘‘England needed,” he said, 
‘‘all her great preachers and moral and religious teachers 


RUE AND PASTORATE 385 


in view of coming events. The loss of a great preacher 
was an irreparable loss, and he felt they had achieved some- 
thing worth while in recovering Dr. Jowett, one of the 
greatest of them. He had been almost overwhelmed by 
protests from America when it became known that he was 
taking a hand in inducing Dr. Jowett to return—protests 
from official sources even, made on the ground that Dr. 
Jowett’s presence in America was of infinite value to the 
United States in its hour of crisis. But it was a national 
service to England to get Dr. Jowett here. . . . No 
country in the world owed so much to great preachers as 
Great Britain, and there had never been a time in our 
history when our future depended so much on the strength, 
the penetrating power, the influence, and the spiritual ap- 
peal that would be made to the multitude.” To listen and 
to respond to such a speech is one of the severest ordeals 
to which a finely tempered man can be subjected, but Jowett 
came out of it unscathed, contenting himself simply to say, 
along with a few remarks in lighter vein, that in obeying 
the call of his country he had only done what countless 
thousands of Englishmen had done. 

No man could go from New York to London in those 
days, least of all a man of Jowett’s mold and temperament, 
without all the horrors of war rolling like a day of doom 
through his soul. London gathered into her own bosom 
the fullness of the distress of a terror-haunted world. Dr. 
Jowett’s very position exposed his heart to the full sweep 
of the flood of iniquities which had thrown the whole world 
into an unprecedented upheaval. He could not stand upon 
the periphery and see it goon. Into the thick of it he must 
enter. He had obtained a commission not only to comfort 
and to cheer, but his later ministry took a distinct turn 
toward the broader social and international aspects of the 


gospel. He was constrained to espouse the cause of a closer 
Zo 


386 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 
and more vital Christian unity and to endeavor to build 
more securely the peace of the world. This change America 
and the Great War had wrought in him. Dean Weldon 
invited him to preach in Durham Cathedral, and despite 
the storm of ecclesiastical intolerance which the invitation 
- raised in some quarters he went quietly on and made the 
occasion notable by the dignity of his bearing and the force 
of his preaching. At the Copenhagen Conference, called 
in the interest of world peace, and later through the columns 
of the British Weekly, he made a plea for peace which re- 
sounded throughout the nations. Some could not approve 
his plans, but the passion of his Christian patriotism all 
could share. 

The exacting climate of London, after New York, and 
the strain of the World War were too much for his strength, 
and when four years had gone by, intermitting between 
loss and gain, weakness and strength, fear and hope, he 
was obliged to give up his pulpit. ‘‘His ministry at West- 
minster. . . was destined to be short, chequered 
by ill health, and closed by a complete breakdown.” In 
the autumn of 1920 he was in a state of serious ill health 
and was compelled to six months of silence. There were 
recurring crises in his condition, and he offered his resigna- 
tion. It was agreed that he should still take the pulpit 
once on a Sunday for a few months. He still had invita- 
tions to take Churches in all parts of Great Britain, but 
realized only too painfully that he could not do it. Yet he 
did not complain. He had had a splendid run, as he said, 
for thirty-five years, and did not “‘feel inclined to murmur 
if the pace has to be slackened.’”’ He preached his last 
sermon at Westminster, and, indeed, the last sermon he 
ever preached, on Sunday, December 17, 1922. The 
last year of his life was spent “in the very valley of the 
shadow of death.’’ His disease, which long baffled the physi- 


B@ee ion ND SPAS LORATE 387 


cians, was at last diagnosed as anemia. On Wednesday 
morning, December 19, 1923, he laid down his disease with 
his life. He had heard the call of another Homeland and 
had gone this time without debate. 


PRINCIPLES AND PRECEPTS OF PREACHING 


The main principles and precepts of his preaching appear 
with unusual distinctness. 

1. His preaching in the very substance and purport of 
it was an evangel, and the central word of that evangel 
was grace. ‘‘Grace,’’ says his biographer, ‘‘was Jowett’s 
sovereign word.” Grace was the idea and principle around 
which he gathered the deeper desires of his ministry, 
whether for himself or for others. The gospel is a product 
of grace. The gospel is a provision of grace. The gospel 
is an offer of grace. The preaching of the gospel is an act 
of grace. “The supreme note of his preaching was the 
proclamation of the all-sufficiency of redeeming grace in 
its relationship to the worst.’’ He was a great wrestler 
with words. He would have only the best word, and then 
that word must yield to him its best. He was never satis- 
fied that he had gotten all that was connoted in the word 
“grace.” ‘“There is no word I have wrestled so much with 
as grace,’ he said. And so there was throughout his 
ministry ‘“‘his tireless emphasis on grace.”’ 

2. His doctrine of grace he naturally preached in definite 
relation to the reality of sin. Only the fact of grace in God 
could suffice for the fact of sin in man. But for the fact 
of sin in man the fact of grace in God does suffice. A 
gospel issuing to man through God’s grace is directed to 
ends which are as clearly defined as the grace itself. So 
he conceived it, and so in explicit ways he preached it. 
Christ’s coming had shaped the gospel in terms of human 
need and there was a definite message to be delivered. 


388 PRINCES: OF THE CHRIS Figas 


To preach the gospel was to bring a definite offer of salva- 
tion to men. He believed that the gospel could be so 
preached and, as a consequent duty and privilege of the 
preacher, should be so preached as to win men to the 
obedience of Christ. For him to preach was to be an 
evangelist. ‘‘Preéminently the Evangel is needed: and 
I am giving my full strength to its proclamation,” said he, 
describing his preaching in New York. His action was 
amply justified. Here are some paragraphs extracted from 
the calendar of his marvelous ministry in the great Ameri- 
can metropolis: ‘‘Last Sunday at the communion service 
we received forty new members, some of them with testi- 
monies like romances. Three of them came to us from 
Roman Catholicism; others came right out of the world. 
I think the final impulse with many of them was a sermon 
on ‘The Friend of Publicans and Sinners.’ I felt the place 
was swept with holy power.” ‘‘I have been preaching a 
short course of morning sermons on Christ’s commission 
as described by himself—‘He hath sent me to give liberty 
to the captives,’ etc. I have been greatly helped in them, 
and there are abundant signs that lasting work has been 
done. I finished the course this morning, preaching to 
2,200 people on ‘The acceptable year of the Lord.’ I 
took it to mean the Jubilee year, the year when any slave 
can gain his freedom in the Lord. I deliberately sought to 
bring things to an issue, and so I had decision forms printed 
on our calendars. I am quietly and confidently expecting 
that a large number have to-day ‘crossed the line.’”’ 
‘‘Sometimes I am overwhelmed at the most evident move- 
ment of the Spirit of God.” ‘I have continued evidence 
of changed lives every week.”’ 

3. He had a pathetic appreciation of the need of comfort 
for the wearied and thwarted life of man. In uncounted 
human hearts there struggled, either for utterance or 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 389 


against utterance, unsated cries for that comfort which the 
grace of God alone could supply. Grace and comfort, 
therefore, and man’s instant and constant need of these, 
were correlative principles of his preaching. He was a 
healer of broken hearts. No smoking flax did he quench. 
No bruised reed did he break. He lifted up the hands that 
hung down. He made straight paths for the feet of the 
lame that they should “‘be not turned out of the way, 
but rather be healed.’’ He made eminently effective even 
in the crash and swell of the modern world’s tumult the 
ancient prophetic precept: “‘Comfort ye, comfort ye my 
people.” To bea teller of good news, a bringer of comfort 
was written in the very terms of his commission. ‘‘It is 
to be good news,” he declared, ‘‘about the vanquishing 
of guilt and the forgiveness of sins. It is to be good news 
about the subjection of the world and the flesh and the 
devil. It is to be good news about the transfiguration of 
sorrow and the withering of a thousand bitter roots of 
anxiety and care. It is to be good news about the stingless 
death and the spoiled and beaten grave. . . . We 
preachers are to go about our ways finding men and women 
shattered and broken, with care upon them and sorrow 
upon them and death upon them, wrinkled in body and 
mind and with the light flickering out of their soul. And 
we are to bring them the news which will be as vitalizing 
air to those who faint, which will be like the power of new 
wings to birds that have been broken in flight.” ‘‘ Never 
shall we forget,’’ said an editor-preacher who heard him, 
“how on that Sunday morning in Fifth Avenue Presby- 
terian Church this mystic prophet of God uttered quietly the 
one sentence: ‘He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted.’ 
He put the magic touch of Christ into these words.”’ 

4, It was an emphasized precept of preaching with him 
that it should take its range within the great themes. He 


390 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 


took the great texts and left trivialities to the trivial. 
The great themes expanded and ennobled and elevated 
preaching. The trivial themes impoverished it. There 
were other causes of the impoverishment of preaching, 
but this he especially emphasized. At the session of the 
Free Church Council held at Hull in 1910 he took as the 
theme of his presidential address, “‘The Ministry of the 
Word.” He had particularly in mind the possible causes 
of the impoverishment of preaching. Many of these he 
regarded as quite actual already. What was to be the pre- 
vailing atmosphere of preaching? Was it to be that of a 
public meeting or of a serious commission? ‘‘We may be 
very busy, but we are not impressive.’”’ And he pleads for 
the great themes. ‘“‘I say, this has been the mood and the 
manner of all great and effective preaching.” This had 
been true of apostolic preaching. It had been true of Spur- 
geon, of Newman, of Binney. ‘‘What is the general char- 
acter of our preaching to-day? Is it characterized by this 
apostolic vastness of theme, this unfolding of arresting 
spiritual wealth and glory? . . . How does it fare 
with our familiar themes? Are they always in the village 
shop, or is there always a suggestion of the mountains about 
them? Are they thin, and small, and of the dwarfed varie- 


ty? . . . Itis this note of vastitude, this ever-present 
sense and suggestion of the infinite, which I think we need 
to recover in our modern preaching. . .*% All this 


means that we must preach more upon the great texts of 
the Scriptures, the tremendous passages whose vastnesses 
almost terrify us as we approach them. .. . Yes, 
we must grapple with the big things, the things about 
which our people will hear nowhere else, the things which 
permanently matter. We are not appointed merely to 
give good advice, but to proclaim good news. Therefore 
must the apostolic themes be our themes: The holiness of 


ee 


PULPIT AND PASTORATE 391 


God; the love of God; the grace of the Lord Jesus; the 
solemn wonders of the Cross; the ministry of the Divine 
forgiveness; the fellowship of his sufferings; the power of 
the Resurrection; the blessedness of Divine communion; 
the heavenly places in Christ Jesus; the mystical indwell- 
ing of the Holy Ghost; the abolition of the deadliness of 
death; the ageless life; our Father’s house; the liberty of 
the glory of the children of God. Themes like these are 
to be our power and distinction.”’ He is against a fierce 
sensationalism: ‘‘ There is a certain reserved and reticent dig- 
nity which will always be an essential element in our power 
among men.” Hé wasagainst a cold officialism, and he quotes 
Emerson on hearing a preacher who was so distant from 
what he did and deadly unreal in his whole attitude that 
he was tempted to say he would never go to church again. 
Another peril of preaching against which he set himself was 
dictatorialism: ‘‘There is a world of difference between the 
authoritative and the dictatorial.”’ He was dead against all 
‘the low expediency which usurps the hills of God.” 

5. His method of preparation and delivery was a full 
manuscript which he had to have before him in the pulpit. 
He was dependent on his manuscript, yet singularly in- 
dependent of it. He was lost without it, yet followed it 
without difficulty. He would read it over three or four 
times beforehand, and then follow it in the pulpit with 
hardly more than a glance at the top of the page. His 
preparation, which he made with the most scrupulous and 
unremitting care, was begun on Tuesday, and he gave two 
days to thinking out and writing each sermon. The hard- 
est, most exacting, and most fruitful part of his prepara- 
tion he found to be the shaping of his theme. He could 
not proceed without this. His theme, his proposition, he 
must find expression for ‘‘in a short, pregnant sentence as 
clear as crystal.” He cultivated his capacity for taking 


392 PRINCES OF THE PUEPTS 


pains until it became not only a habit but a faculty. His 
style was shaped largely by his consummate use of words. 
He sought and wooed words with a passion, and the very 
wooing of words, as well as great soul passions, was in his 
preaching. And his voice was as wooing as his words. 
In truth, the two were beautifully blended. Mr. Hugh 
Sinclair, in his ‘‘ Voices of To-Day,” speaks of him as fol- 
lows: ‘‘He literally gave himself to preaching with a dedica- 
tion that knew no reserves or relaxations, and he reaped 
a rich reward. He is a master craftsman of the pulpit as 
well as a supreme artist. Along certain lines of natural 
endowment he has genius, along other less inherently con- 
genial lines he has achieved excellence by dint of the mi- 
nutest application and the most unwearying patience. 
His elocution is perfect, his enunciation clear-cut and 
precise to a degree, without being in the least unnatural. 

He has striven not for the fine, the beautiful, or 
the exotic, but for the apt word, the telling phrase, the 
simile that is understood by the average man and goes to 
his heart. Take his preaching at what angle you will, 
examine thought, manner, word, or voice, at every point 
there is abundant evidence of purposeful craftsmanship 
working upon a fine natural endowment.” He did have a 
fine natural endowment; but he also paid the price of the 
mastery of the art of Christian preaching. 

In a delicately wrought devotional article on ‘‘The 
Mystic Scales’’ based on the text, ‘‘By him actions are 
weighed,”’ which was printed in one of the religious news- 
papers to which he was a frequent contributor, he refers 
to the ordinary human inclination to measure things and 
take them by their bulk, while God weighs actions and 
takes them at their worth. Now he himself has gone to 
be appraised in that land where human values are weighed 
in terms of eternal worth. 


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